Category: Athletics

TAMPA, Fla. — University of Wisconsin football coach Bret Bielema may have managed to anger officials from two conferences following the Outback Bowl.

Bielema tore into Tuesday’s crew following the Badgers’ 21-17 loss to Tennessee, saying, “I guarantee you I’m never going to schedule a game that’s officiated by WAC officials, that’s for sure.”

Problem is, Tuesday’s officials were from the Mountain West Conference, not the Western Athletic Conference.

Bielema appeared to have some legitimate gripes. On UW’s first touchdown, senior quarterback Tyler Donovan’s was shaken up after what appeared to be a helmet-to-helmet hit by Tennessee safety Er

TAMPA – It was a peaceful gathering, reminiscent of the Pilgrims and the Indians. A man in University of Tennessee orange and white leaned over a grill, cooking brats for red-bedecked University of Wisconsin fans.

“We haven’t started drinking enough to fight,” deadpanned Vince Tullo, 49.

Many Badger Fans, tickets in hand, are on their way to the Outback Bowl.

Some of the Badger faithful went on a trip to the bowl game sponsored by The Wisconsin Alumni Association. Fans left this morning from Dane County Regional Airport dressed all in red for the four day trip to Florida.
And they are ready for Tennessee on January 1st.

Said Bill Rentz, “Actually we haven’t gone to a bowl game since the first Rose Bowl back in ’94. We’re big Badger fans. We’ve got season tickets. We’ve had them for a long time. But we haven’t made it to a bowl game since this year. We decided we’d go.”

Outback Bowl officials extended a special welcome to the Wisconsin Badgers and the Tennessee Volunteers during the first official bowl event of the week at the Outback Steakhouse Team Welcome Dinner at the Tampa Convention Center. Teams were treated to a feast from Outback Steakhouse while bowl representatives welcomed the players and presented gifts to the Head Coaches, Athletic Directors and their wives.

And a feast it was as the teams devoured more than 5,000 pounds of food including 750 pounds of steak, 750 pounds of chicken, 900 pounds of ribs, 950 pounds of Bloomin Onions, 700 pounds of caesar salad, 200 lbs of green beans, 1,300 lbs of chocolate cake and 95 gallons of BBQ sauce.

Both coaches and Athletic Directors spoke briefly at the event. “We are thrilled to be a participant in the Outback Bowl,” noted Wisconsin A.D. Barry Alvarez. “We want to thank Outback for their tremendous sponsorship and the bowl they’ve put together. We are also thrilled to play a tradition-rich program like Tennessee. Our fans are excited to be a part of this great bowl game and great match-up.”

TAMPA – Although this particular incident at the University of Wisconsin’s Camp Randall Stadium took place years ago, the time frame is of little importance simply because in some form or fashion the story repeats itself pretty much every Saturday of every Badgers football season.

The only difference here is Badgers coach Bret Bielema, whose 9-3 Big Ten team faces the Tennessee Volunteers in the New Year’s Day Outback Bowl, is the storyteller. He’s recalling being a freshman defensive lineman at Iowa and making his first trip with the Hawkeyes to Wisconsin. That’s important, because among visiting fans in the stands was Bielema’s father.

TAMPA, Fla. â?? Before the University of Wisconsin football team’s defense could find out what it was, it had to first discover what it wasn’t.

The defense spent the first half of the season searching for an identity and coping with injuries.

If cornerback Jack Ikegwuonu learns he can significantly improve his NFL draft stock by returning to the University of Wisconsin for his senior season, he’ll gladly be back at UW in 2008.

If Ikegwuonu is told he will have little to gain by remaining in college one more year, he’ll likely be playing in the National Football League next season.

The Dane County regional airport in Madison was decked in Holiday Red and Green Tuesday, but at the security check point, all you saw was red and white.

“We’re doing this for a reason, we love to play so you have to take the consequences with it as well,” says senior wide receiver Paul Hubbard.

Consequences like missing out on Christmas. Tuesday the Badger football team headed to Tampa Florida for the Outback Bowl against the University of Tennessee.

Ask Kyle Turris about putting on the Team Canada sweater and his face lights up like a kid about to dive into a pile of unopened Christmas presents.

The University of Wisconsin center will be one of 22 Canadians wearing the maple leaf-laden jersey on the ice Wednesday when the World Junior Championship opens in the Czech Republic.

The voice on the cell phone crackled, faded in and out, then disappeared completely. This happened multiple times before a decent connection was found.

“Welcome to our world,” said Mark Osiecki, the assistant coach and recruiting coordinator for the University of Wisconsin men’s hockey team.

He and fellow UW assistant Kevin Patrick were in Osiecki’s late-model SUV earlier this week, headed from Madison to Minneapolis.

Chris Pressley wants to be a light.

It’s the simple wish and driving force behind an extraordinary 21-year-old junior who is the starting fullback for the University of Wisconsin football team.

“Everything I’m doing, if people see it and they want to do things, be a light,” Pressley said. “As long as you let your light shine on someone else, it’s contagious.”

The urge is a recurring one that constantly jumps into Jolene Anderson’s mind.

It drives her to get off the couch, walk out into the cold winter night and head back to the Kohl Center.

It takes her down to the arena control entrance, where she coaxes arena personnel into letting her in.

And it brings her out onto the court â?? either the arena’s main court or the Nicholas-Johnson Pavilion, whichever is available.

The setting doesn’t really matter.

“I just want to shoot.”

John Stocco has a pretty good idea of one of his Christmas gifts from his father.

It’s John Grisham’s newest book, “Playing for Pizza,” and it’s not a bad reference point for Stocco, the former Wisconsin quarterback who agreed this month to play in the very real football league that Grisham fictionalized.

Stocco will join the Milan Rhinos in NFL Italy, known as the Lega Nazionale Football Americano Italiano in Italian, and will immediately be one of the league’s top players when the season starts in March.

With the University of Wisconsin scheduled to arrive tonight in Tampa, Fla., this will be another Christmas spent away from home and family for Matt Shaughnessy.

You won’t hear Shaughnessy, from Norwich, Conn., complaining about separation anxiety.

The junior defensive end has grown accustomed to spending the holidays on the road but more important is that today he knows his older brother, Jamie, is back home, alive and growing stronger after a near-fatal battle with blood clots.

When the University of Wisconsin resumes practice today in preparation for the 2008 Outback Bowl, all players not sidelined by injury will be academically eligible.

University of Wisconsin offensive coordinator Paul Chryst was in a unique position to offer junior tight end Travis Beckum some valuable insight on his NFL prospects.

….Ryan knows a thing or two about routines and how it’s important to make sure nothing gets in the way of changing them. That’s why he didn’t have much to say about celebrating his 60th birthday today.

“You know what? I don’t notice any change. Because it comes when I’m in season and it’s always in the holiday season, I don’t get that much time to reflect on it,” said the fit and healthy Ryan. “In my mind 60 today is 40 back during my mom’s and dad’s generation.”

Badgers men’s basketball head coach Bo Ryan has built buzz for himself and the Wisconsin program when online videos featuring him performing the “Hambone” and “Soulja Boy” slam dunked over the last year, but these aren’t the only instances where he has stepped into the world of non-sports entertainment.

Ryan is also the producer of a trailer for Geeks From Space, a proposed reality TV series that was created by Megan Kaiser and Quintin Strack. Both graduates of UW-Madison, they have been immersed in the world of reality TV in recent years.

MADISON, Wis. — Fans with season tickets for University of Wisconsin-Madison basketball will have to pay more for a parking space near the Kohl Center.

Season ticket holders received a letter earlier this month informing them of changes to the parking program.

Less than two weeks ago, it appeared tailback P.J. Hill would not be healthy enough to play in the 2008 Outback Bowl.

His prognosis has changed dramatically and on Monday University of Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema sounded optimistic that Hill could give UW three viable tailback options against Tennessee.

Like a lot of UW-Madison alums, I get a warm squeeze from the song “Varsity.” It didn’t mean a dang thing the year I earned my varsity letter in swimming three decades ago. In fact, I never even wore the jacket during the years I competed for UW. Wearing sports stuff just wasn’t my thing. It had nothing to do with the shame some on campus felt over how bad the UW football team was in the late ’70s.

How bad was the football program back then? Real bad. Not Veer offense bad. Worse. The team was so crappy they didn’t even have a name for their offense.

Last Friday’s UW athletic board meeting began on a gleeful note. Athletic Director Barry Alvarez reported that the Big Ten conference would allow football games to be played after Thanksgiving next season, which means the Badgers will be able to fit in a bye week and the state’s deer hunters will have a dilemma on their hands. The Finance Committee reported that the athletic department will pull in more than $70 million in 2007, a new record.

But then the meeting hit a snag. Jeremi Suri, an associate professor of history, turned up the heat on board chair Walter Dickey over a letter signed by Dickey, Alvarez and UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley on Nov. 2. The letter set forth the UW’s position on the Big Ten Network, which would broadcast the following day’s football game against Ohio State.

Prof. Jeremi Suri was recently named one of America’s brightest young minds by the Smithsonian Institute and has recently published Henry Kissinger and the American Century with Harvard University Press. He also sits on the UW-Madison Athletic Board, where he has become a voice of dissent.

At a board meeting last Friday, Suri confronted UW Law Prof. Walter Dickey, chairman of the board, over a letter Dickey signed along with athletic director Barry Alvarez and Chancellor John Wiley which appeared to stake out the university’s position on the network and its bargaining stalemate with cable providers.

A student lender that paid students as much as $50 for referring classmates for loans and paid dozens of universities to use the institutionsâ?? names, athletic team names, logos and mascots on advertising material sent to student borrowers has agreed to stop these marketing tactics, the New York attorney general announced Tuesday.

At first, Scott Van Pelt was incredulous, stunned, flabbergasted. And, then, he was just numb. Why would the University of Wisconsin want an ESPN sports anchor — a self-described “bald-headed guy who talks about sports at midnight” — to address graduates at Sunday’s commencement exercises? The more he thought about it, the more weird it felt. Rationalizing that such speakers are usually politicians, Hollywood actors or rock stars, he wondered if he wasn’t being “Punk’d” by MTV’s hidden cameras. “I kept waiting for someone to show up and say, ‘They really don’t want you to do this, ya dope,'” Van Pelt admitted.

The status of University of Wisconsin freshman Aaron Henry for the Outback Bowl on Jan. 1 appears, at best, uncertain.

The University of Wisconsin appears to be moving on without running back P.J. Hill as it prepares for the Outback Bowl on Jan. 1.

Hill, who missed 13 of the last 15 quarters of the regular season because of a leg injury suffered in the first quarter against Indiana in Week 9, continues to be a spectator at practice.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

That was the sound of the Marquette University men’s basketball team answering the bell time after time Saturday evening at the Kohl Center. Whether the Golden Eagles were stemming the tide of a University of Wisconsin rally or simply silencing most of the sellout crowd of 17,190, Tom Crean’s team played with a purpose befitting a unit that is ranked 11th in the nation and expected to contend for a Big East Conference championship.

The University of Wisconsin has opened talks with Iowa about moving their 2008 football game to the Saturday after Thanksgiving, in the interest of creating a bye week during a rigorous stretch of the Big Ten Conference season.

Wisconsin junior tight end Travis Beckum, a consensus first-team All-Big Ten Conference pick, on Thursday fell short in his bid to win the Mackey Award.

If you think Division I-A college football isn’t a big, big business, you need to see the salary chart for coaches in the Wednesday edition of USA Today.

Wow. Breathtaking.

All of these guys aren’t coaches. Some are CEOs of major companies with whistles around their necks.

This year, for the first time, the average earnings of the 120 major-college football coaches hit $1 million, a USA TODAY analysis finds. That’s not counting the benefits, perks and myriad bonuses in their contracts.

At least 50 coaches are making seven figures, seven more than a year ago. At least a dozen are pulling down $2 million or more, up from nine in 2006.

The University of Wisconsin at Madison has filed a trademark-infringement lawsuit against Washburn University over a logo it says is too similar to its â??Motion W.â?

According to the Wisconsin State Journal, the lawsuit says that over the past six years, Wisconsin has repeatedly asked Washburn, a 7,200-student institution, in Topeka, Kan., to stop using the logo.

MADISON, Wis. – This legal dispute is sponsored by the letter W.

For the first time, the University of Wisconsin-Madison is taking another school to court to protect the trademark of its prized W logo.

The university filed a federal trademark infringement lawsuit last week against Washburn University in Topeka, Kan. The 7,200-student university uses a W to promote its athletics teams.

Kindergartners might just call it the letter W.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison calls it the “Motion W.” And the school contends in a lawsuit filed last week in federal court that the Motion W looks a whole lot like the W used by Washburn University.