Since Lou Holtz hired Barry Alvarez as one of his assistant coaches at Notre Dame, Holtz has been a confidante and adviser to Alvarez after their three years together in South Bend ended.
The two coaches have talked regularly about football matters over the years, and Alvarez brought Holtz down to Tampa last season to talk to the Badgers before they played Georgia in the Outback Bowl.
Holtz did not think it was wise for Alvarez to announce his retirement before the season has even started.
It could make for a long, emotional roller-coaster ride if Barry Alvarez pauses to reflect on every “last time” he will encounter during his 16th and final season as coach of the University of Wisconsin football team.
So Alvarez, who announced last month that he will step down following the 2005 season and turn the program over to defensive coordinator Bret Bielema, doesn’t plan on stopping to reminisce at every stop.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Rookie cornerback Scott Starks is moving up the depth chart for the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Bo Ryan doesn’t make a habit of coaching opposing teams the day before a matchup.
But it’s not everyday that the University of Wisconsin men’s coach gets a chance to work with some of the best players China has to offer.
Wisconsin Wolves football coach Norm Killion has player concerns that Barry Alvarez never worries about.
Game-night child care is one. Backups for pregnant players is another.
“I have an Olympic-caliber soccer player who says she’ll kick for me next fall if she doesn’t get pregnant,” said Killion, who will be recruiting a new Madison-based women’s professional football team at tryouts beginning Sunday.
By wading into the highly contentious issue of Native American nicknames and mascots for college sports teams on Friday, National Collegiate Athletic Association leaders achieved their stated aim of sending a clear message that they object to such imagery. But the NCAA also created a cacophony of confusion and put the association in the potentially uncomfortable position of judging when Native American references are ââ?¬Å?hostileââ?¬Â and ââ?¬Å?abusiveââ?¬Â and when theyââ?¬â?¢re not ââ?¬â?? questions that could take months, and possibly help from the courts, to resolve
The decorated halls of higher education sometimes aren’t always so high-minded. In fact, they look downright dumb in some cases. Two schools that immediately come to mind are a pair of otherwise fine academic institutions marred by their leadership’s intransigence over an issue many schools long ago resolved with a few fast-disappearing traits in our nation: common sense, appropriateness and decency.
Commentary By Jon Saraceno
Much has been written over the past week about the NCAA Executive Committee’s decision not to conduct championships on the campuses of member institutions where the use of nicknames and mascots representing American Indians is considered hostile and abusive.
By Myles Brand NCAA president
University of Wisconsin football coach Barry Alvarez needed only a few minutes to end months of speculation regarding which of his co-offensive coordinators will handle play-calling in 2005. “I will give approval of every play,” he said.
“What you’re going to be seeing today is the tip of the iceberg. … The idea being, you, as a coach, using this technology, for the first time are literally able to look through your quarterback’s eyes.”
— Curt Krull, founder of RST (Reality Sports Technologies)
….As part of his sales pitch to the UW coaches, Krull said, “We’re brand new, and if you’re on board, you’re going to be literally two or three years ahead of the rest of the Big Ten in terms of this technology.”
First impressions, second thoughts and the third degree:
Instead of trying to legislate its fuzzy perception of morality regarding the use of Native American nicknames, the NCAA would have been better served emphasizing one of its core values to get its point across.
The NCAA is about many things, but power is No. 1. When it singled out 18 schools last week that feature “hostile or abusive” nicknames and mascots, and threatened to ban those images from postseason tournaments starting next year, the NCAA didn’t look very tough. Downright wishy-washy is more like it.
The crooked lines on the Kohl Center basketball floor are history, thanks to a Three Lakes company that resurfaces hardwood courts all summer from dawn to dusk, from Wausau to West Point, N.Y.
Jeff Baseman and his three-man crew spent 62 hours apiece to sand down and repaint the University of Wisconsin’s home court and its adjacent practice facility, the Nicholas-Johnson Pavilion. Baseman Bros. Inc. started the $24,425 job last Friday and wrapped up Thursday, working straight through the weekend.
Former University of Wisconsin athletic director Pat Richter has followed major college football since he was a kid growing up in Madison, but the upcoming season might require his greatest sense of focus.
Richter has agreed to participate in a new top-25 ranking, conducted by the Harris polling service, that will help determine the national champion.
For three former University of Wisconsin players on the Buffalo Bills� training camp roster, receiver Lee Evans and safeties Troy Vincent and Jim Leonhard seem headed in vastly different directions.
The grand reopening of Camp Randall Stadium will not only trigger organized celebrations and fond memories in the coming months, it will be used to sell groceries, clothes, DVDs and other souvenirs.
Plans to “Celebrate The Legacy” of Camp Randall were outlined Wednesday. The process will begin with an open house later this month. It will continue Sept. 3 when the Badgers christen their new home and its $109 million makeover by playing host to Bowling Green. The process will continue to unfold during the remaining five home games as people and performances are recalled from the 88-year history of the facility.
MADISON, Wis. – Camp Randall Stadium, one of college footballââ?¬â?¢s most traditional and historic venues, opens its doors this fall after nearly five years of renovation. The University of Wisconsin Athletic Department ushers in this new era with a season-long campaign called, ââ?¬Å?Celebrate the Legacy.ââ?¬Â (Athletic Communication)
No matter how many games are won on the football field in 2005, University of Wisconsin fans who will attend the Badgers’ six home games at Camp Randall Stadium should be treated to a state-of-the-art facility and a yearlong program celebration.
ormer UW-Madison football star Brent Moss, who is facing possession of cocaine charges, has had his bail revoked for failing a drug test.
Moss, of Racine, was charged on July 26 with felony bail jumping. According to the criminal complaint, Moss tested positive for cocaine at a scheduled drug screening.
What is the ultimate souvenir from a University of Wisconsin football game?
The answer could come today when UW Athletic Department officials unveil plans for the grand reopening of Camp Randall Stadium.
The Badgers will wear custom-made throwback uniforms, circa 1962 to ’66, for their season opener against Bowling Green on Sept. 3. The game-worn uniforms then will be auctioned off as part of a massive commemoration of the $109 million renovation of Camp Randall.
The players simply want to play. The NCAA approved legislation in April that will extend the college football season from 11 to 12 games beginning next year. It’s a decision that appears to go against the grain of the organization’s increased academic standards but many players don’t care, at least not those in the Big Ten.
(August 2, 2005) ââ?¬â? PITTSFORD ââ?¬â? Jim Leonhard has heard it before. Boy has he.
“You’re too small, kid. Just too small.”
“I’ve probably heard it at every level from everybody. It’s nothing new,” said Leonhard, a 5-foot-8 free-agent free safety with the Buffalo Bills. “But the way I see it, if you can play football, you can play football. That’s what I try to do. Don’t be somebody you’re not. I’m not a 210-pound safety so I can’t play like one. It’s about using your strengths.”
DELAFIELD – Trevon Hughes listened to the numerous recruiting pitches, explored all of his options and weighed advice and input from his family.
But when it came down to choosing where he would play college basketball, nothing was able to sway him.
“I had my mind set on Wisconsin,” he said.
DELAFIELD — Anybody who knows Trevon Hughes rarely calls him by his first name. He’s referred to as Cadet Hughes most of the time by the teachers at St. John’s Northwestern Military Academy here. His family and friends have been calling him “Poppy” since he was a baby in Queens.
Has anyone seen the University of Wisconsin football program lately? When six national publications published their top 25 pre-season polls earlier this summer, UW was MIA. When the Big Ten Conference released its pre-season poll showing only the top three teams on Monday, the first day of the league’s pre-season meetings, UW was again absent.
Bret Bielema, the future head football coach at the University of Wisconsin, still has a note he received from Hayden Fry, when the former Iowa coach retired following the 1998 season.
Fry had an uncanny knack for identifying assistants with the potential to be head coaches and he saw something in Bielema, an undersized nose guard whom he coached as a player and then first hired as an undergraduate student assistant, working in the weight room in 1993, before eventually promoting him to linebacker coach.
We have a little time on our hands before Bret Bielema becomes the 10th coach in the modern era of University of Wisconsin football, not to mention the 10th new coach in the Big Ten Conference since UW’s unprecedented run of back-to-back Rose Bowl wins in 1999 and 2000.
I thought I would put it to use by throwing together a list of suggestions that might help Bielema prepare for his first season as coach of the Badgers.
Defensive coordinator Bret Bielema is keenly aware his success as the next football coach at the University of Wisconsin will be directly tied to his powers of persuasion as a recruiter.
“As coaches, we all realize, (we) kind of subscribe to the Kentucky Derby theory of coaching,” Bielema said. “Everybody remembers the horse. Not many people remember the jockey.
University of Wisconsin football coach/athletic director Barry Alvarez unwittingly failed to follow proper school hiring procedure when he appointed Bret Bielema to be his coaching successor.
UW regulations call for such a vacancy to be posted for two weeks before the position can be filled. Alvarez didn’t do this because he received inaccurate information from Casey Nagy, the special assistant to UW chancellor John Wiley.
MADISON ââ?¬â? The University of Wisconsin didnââ?¬â?¢t follow school procedure when athletic director and football coach Barry Alvarez picked his coaching successor, a newspaper reported.
….To his credit, Alvarez swallowed his pride as a coach and instead chose the good of the program over any ego-driven happy-ending scenarios he may have dreamed up.
The athletic director in Alvarez clearly took over. He realized a transition season will benefit his successor, current defensive coordinator Bret Bielema, much like it did for Alvarez on his way to taking over the AD gig from Pat Richter.
The University of Wisconsin did not follow procedure when Athletic Director and football coach Barry Alvarez picked his successor.
School regulations require the university to post the job vacancy for two weeks before filling the job. Casey Nagy, Assistant to the U.W. chancellor, says he didn’t know the school needed to post the job.
Whether or not UW’s hiring policy was violated, University officials confirm for 27 News that Bret Bielema will still take over as head football coach for the Badgers next season.
In his dual role as director of athletics and football coach, Barry Alvarez has joked that when he walks into the office each day, people are lined up to meet with him. That probably won’t change after he steps down as football coach after the 2005 season, but his life on the job will change. Gone will be the non-stop juggling act that he has performed for the past two years. In its place will be a focus on two key aspects of the department’s success: coaches and money.
So what highlights will Barry Alvarez’s Big Ten Conference farewell tour provide Wisconsin football fans in 2005? Will they witness a title run similar to last season, albeit one that petered out with consecutive losses to Michigan State and Iowa? Or will the staggering personnel losses UW suffered in the off-season and unresolved questions that linger on offense conspire to render Alvarez’s 16th and final season as head coach mundane, perhaps even mediocre?
University of Wisconsin senior wide receiver Brandon Williams had no idea what was up when a team meeting was called for Wednesday morning.
Like other players, he had heard speculation over the years, about how long Barry Alvarez would be the football coach for the Badgers. That speculation only intensified when Alvarez also officially became the athletic director April 1, 2004.
at Richter called the Barry Alvarez years the greatest era in University of Wisconsin football history.
No one argued.
No one should.
When Richter hired Alvarez as coach in 1990, Alvarez took over a program that was competitively and financially bankrupt. Over the next 15 years, that all changed. The Badgers won three Rose Bowls, became a fixture in the top 25 rankings, played to full houses and helped pay for a beautifully renovated stadium.
Anybody who wondered if Bret Bielema is ready for his first head-coaching job at the University of Wisconsin – and to follow a legend no less – needed only to watch how he handled himself at Thursday’s news conference.
Bielema, who has spent the past year as the defensive coordinator for the Badgers, spent the last two months talking to UW football coach Barry Alvarez about becoming the team’s next head coach.
You don’t need words to describe the legacy of Barry Alvarez as football coach at the University of Wisconsin. All you need is one stark and painful picture.
It was taken from the north end zone of Camp Randall Stadium on Nov. 25, 1989. If you look closely, it seems as though you can count all 29,776 souls who witnessed the final game of the pre-Alvarez Era.
In retrospect, it’s hard to recall what was more wrenching for diehard Badgers fans: The 31-3 loss to Michigan State, which brought the curtain down on the Don Morton Error, or that so few gave a hoot.
University of Wisconsin Athletic Director and football coach Barry Alvarez can’t remember which friend gave him the advice.
Alvarez has a group of friends, mostly businessmen, that meets regularly and talks about a variety of things. One day the subject was retirement. The sentiment was that Alvarez would know when the time was right to walk away from his job as football coach.
That time is now. After months of discussions with his wife, Alvarez, 58, announced Thursday he would step down as football coach at the end of the upcoming season, while retaining his duties as athletic director. He named defensive coordinator Bret Bielema as his successor.
The first notion that Bret Bielema wants to dispel as the anointed successor to the man who resurrected the University of Wisconsin football program is that coaching is a young man’s game.
“I don’t believe that. I really don’t,” he said, fully aware that come January, by becoming a first-time head coach at the ripe old age of 35, he will be the youngest coach in the Big Ten Conference and one of the youngest ever at the Division I level.
“They (the fans) have got to understand this thing isn’t going to turn overnight. But let me say this, they better get season tickets right now because before long, they probably won’t be able to.”
– Jan. 2, 1990
Two weeks ago, Barry Alvarez was reminded of his memorable tag line; the closing words at his introductory press conference as the University of Wisconsin football coach. Alvarez laughed at the recollection, knowing that his brashness really covered up an innocence about what he was getting himself into.
If the announcement had been a blitzing linebacker from the weakside of the formation, University of Wisconsin quarterback John Stocco would have been sacked.
“I didn’t see it coming at all, to tell you the truth,” said Stocco after learning that his head coach, Barry Alvarez, would be stepping aside at the end of the 2005 season.
“He’s turned this program around and had so much success here that if he feels it’s time for him to go, then it’s time. We have nothing but respect for the coach, and we’ve got to respect his decision.”
MADISON, Wis. — Barry Alvarez announced Thursday that this will be his last year coaching the University of Wisconsin football team.
He will remain director of the athletics department.
Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle tells WIBA News…he’s one of Barry Alvarez’s biggest fans and offered his congratulations to the Badger’s long time coach for taking the program beyond anyone’s expectations. Doyle says…as a life long resident and UW Alumnus…he suffered through some of the program’s lean years. But he had this message for the retiring head coach. “Well, as I said to Barry…and the same is true for the Packers…it’s a lot easier to govern this state…on a Monday after the Badgers and the Packers have won a football game. You know people are really committed to these teams in Wisconsin.” Doyle says he has confidence that Defensive Coordinator Bret Bielema will continue the winning tradition at the UW.
15 years ago, Barry Alvarez inherited a run of losing seasons, empty stadium seats and red ink. “About 15 years ago, I looked at the UW as a sleeping giant,” said Alvarez. He managed to wake up that sleeping giant. 15 years later in Madison, as Alvarez prepares to leave the field, he’s a household na
“This is one of my favorite pictures, this was Barry greeting me or me greeting Barry, I don’t know which way it was, but it was right after the Michigan game in 1993,” tells Michael Leckrone holding onto a picture from that day.
Bret Bielema’s journey to the college football coaching ranks, a journey that last year brought him to the University of Wisconsin as the team’s defensive coordinator, began humbly on his family farm about six miles outside Prophetstown, Ill.
Barry Alvarez knew that the rigors of continuing to serve as both head football coach and athletic director at the University of Wisconsin would eventually become too burdensome. So, confident that he had the ideal successor already on his coaching staff, Alvarez announced Thursday that he had decided to coach one more season, then turn over the program to defensive coordinator Bret Bielema. Alvarez, 58, will coach through the 2005 season, his 16th at UW, and then step down to focus solely on his role as athletic director.
MADISON, Wis. – The following is the complete transcript of Athletic Director and Head Football Coach Barry Alvarez’s news conference on Thursday announcing he will step down as football coach at the end of the 2005 season. Current defensive coordinator Bret Bielema has been named his successor.
This will be Barry Alvarez’s last season as the head football coach for the University of Wisconsin, he announced today.
Bret Bielema will be the new coach in 2006 and Alvarez will remain as the school’s athletic director.
The timing of the firing of Troy Ward as the University of Wisconsin associate men’s hockey coach puts head coach Mike Eaves in a bit of a bind for finding a replacement.
…the Badgers now have a short window in which to hire a new assistant coach. The job will be posted starting Monday and Eaves must wait two weeks before making a move, putting the calendar at Aug. 15. Classes begin Sept. 2, which is probably around the earliest time the new hire would be able to start if the process moves along quickly.
There was a deep breath and a long pause at the other end of the line before University of Wisconsin men’s hockey coach Mike Eaves addressed the obvious question.
Calling it an act of “tough love” for a longtime friend and trusted lieutenant, University of Wisconsin men’s hockey coach Mike Eaves has fired associate head coach Troy Ward.
“In my mind, I’m relieving (Ward) of his duties and asking him to go and find where his passion is,” Eaves said Tuesday.
University of Wisconsin men’s hockey coach Mike Eaves has fired associate head coach Troy Ward, the Wisconsin State Journal reported today.
Eaves told the newspaper that the decision to dismiss his longtime friend was based not on job performance but on Ward’s continual inquiries into other jobs. Ward, who is divorced and is seeking primary custody of his two sons, interviewed this summer for the vacant head coaching position at Norfolk of the American Hockey League, it was reported.
….The winds of change. The NCAA has changed its view on preseason workouts. And Alvarez is now serving in the dual role of football coach and athletic director; changing his mind-set on cost-efficiency.
Hence, the Badgers will not be returning to the O’Connor Center in August. Instead, they will conduct all business at their home base, Camp Randall. The players will be boarded at the nearby Regent.
Calling it an act of “tough love” for a longtime friend and trusted lieutenant, University of Wisconsin men’s hockey coach Mike Eaves has fired associate head coach Troy Ward.
“In my mind, I’m relieving (Ward) of his duties and asking him to go and find where his passion is,” Eaves said Tuesday.
A report to be released today by the Center for Science in the Public Interest calls on the National Collegiate Athletic Association to ban beer advertising at sporting events and during televised sports broadcasts.
The report, “How the NCAA Recruits Kids for the Beer Market,” argues that the NCAA actively tries to attract young consumers to its brand, and by doing so exposes young people to beer advertisers.
Steve Malchow, associate director of communications at the University of Wisconsin, shot his first hole in one on June 20 at University Ridge Golf Course in Madison, Wis. Malchow aced the 180-yard 17th hole using a 5-iron.
Ironically, Malchow nearly aced the hole in a previous round during an outing in which a Lexus was to be given away. His shot ended up two inches past the hole.
MADISON, Wis. – Cross country/track and field runner Simon Bairu and swimmer Carly Piper have been named the University of Wisconsinââ?¬â?¢s Athletes of the Year, the school announced recently. (Athletic Communication.)
Cutting more than half the pages from a school media guide was no easy task, sports information directors say.
