Tramel's ScissorTales: Barry Alvarez built Wisconsin Badgers into a college football power
Berry TramelOklahoman
Barry Alvarez came to Wisconsin 33 years ago as the Badgers’ football coach and did what we all ought to do with a new job.
He looked around.
Alvarez saw big, strong farm boys. The descendants of German and Scandanavian immigrants.
And Alvarez hatched a plan to win football games. Seventeen years after Alvarez retired as Wisconsin’s football coach, and a year after he retired as athletic director, that plan still works.
The Badgers play Oklahoma State in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl on Tuesday, and while 2022 is a massively disappointing season for 6-6 Wisconsin, with favorite sons Paul Chryst and Jim Leonhard having been fired from and bypassed for, respectively, the head coaching job, that’s the point.
Wisconsin is a big winner on the college gridiron. Chryst’s 67-26 record wasn’t enough to save his job. The Badgers have been thinking big and winning big since 1993, when Alvarez’s fourth squad reached the Rose Bowl and ushered in the golden age of Wisconsin football.
“We do it the right way,” Alvarez said the other day from Florida, where in the last 18 months he’s able to spend more time after more than three decades leading the Badgers as football coach and/or athletic director. “We’re normally a team that’s good fundamentally, always going to be a physical team. We’re going to be a little more run than pass. If you can’t stop the run, we may not pass. That’s what you’re going to get.”
The Badgers haven’t had much Oklahoma exposure. They’ve never played OSU. Had a two-game series with OU back in 1969-70, when the world was young. Oklahomans might not realize how consistently excellent Wisconsin has been over the last three decades.
Get ready to be impressed.
Among power-conference programs in the last 30 years, here are the top seven in victories: Ohio State 316, Alabama 299, OU 284, Georgia 282, Florida 275, Florida State 275 and Wisconsin 265.
The Badgers have more victories than do Clemson, Oregon or Louisiana State (each with 264). More than Southern Cal (259), Michigan (258) or Penn State (255). More than Texas (254) or Nebraska. More than Notre Dame or Miami or Auburn or Brigham Young (246 each).
Wisconsin isn’t flashy. Wisconsin isn’t sexy. But Wisconsin wins, year after year, decade after decade, thanks to the foundation laid by Alvarez.
“I take a lot of pride in it,” Alvarez said.
Alvarez built a brand at Wisconsin, Bill Snyder at Kansas State, Frank Beamer at Virginia Tech, Bob Devaney at Nebraska, Steve Spurrier at Florida, Gary Patterson at Texas Christian. Who else had such a solitary impact on a program? Maybe Don Nehlen at West Virginia, Rich Brooks at Oregon, Don James at Washington or Hayden Fry at Iowa?
Alvarez was born and raised in Pennsylvania, was a Devaney linebacker at Nebraska in the 1960s, then coached under Fry at Iowa and Lou Holtz at Notre Dame.
“I learned a lot from Hayden,” Alvarez said, referring to the Iowa years, which included Bob Stoops as a Hawkeye safety. “Hayden was just a wise person. He knew football. He was quirky, people see him as loosie goosy, but I learned his day-to-day operation was excellent.
“I didn’t particularly agree with his football philosophy, but how he operated his program, handled his coaches, set up his recruiting. … Bill Snyder, that’s where Bill’s foundation is from, Hayden.”
In the final Badger game without Alvarez’s fingerprints, Nov. 25, 1989, Wisconsin finished off a dismal season by losing 31-3 to Michigan State, in front of an announced crowd of 29,776. Alvarez estimates the actual attendance at maybe 15,000.
In the decades since, of course, Camp Randall Stadium has become a college football cathedral, with Badger fans routinely filling its 80,321 seats.
Before Alvarez’s arrival, the Badgers had been 9-36 the previous four seasons. Between the stunning Rose Bowl season of 1962 and Alvarez’s arrival, Wisconsin had seven winning seasons. The Badgers’ Big Ten record during that span: 74-134-6.
Wisconsin was a sleepy Big Ten program, indistinguishable from Minnesota or Purdue or Illinois or all the others chasing Ohio State and Michigan.
But at his introductory press conference all those years ago, Alvarez vowed to build a wall around Wisconsin and keep all the best prospects in-state. Those prospects were mostly big linemen, and Alvarez’s wall stood firm.
Since Alvarez’s arrival, 37 Wisconsin offensive linemen have made the National Football League. Twenty-five of those 37 played high school football in Wisconsin, including all-pros Joe Thomas, Travis Frederick and Ryan Ramczyk.
Alvarez’s first hirings were phenomenal. Young, sharp, recruiting-savvy. A textbook case on how to build a program. Alvarez’s early assistants included Bret Bielema, who succeeded Alvaraz as head coach, was wildly successful and now has Illinois winning; Bill Callahan, who later coached the Oakland Raiders to a Super Bowl and became Nebraska’s head coach; Dan McCarney, who became head coach at Iowa State and remains the Cyclones’ all-time leader in coaching victories; and Brad Childress, eventual head coach of the Minnesota Vikings.
That staff recruited a class that 2½ years later upset Ohio State (quarterbacked by Kirk Herbstreit) and a year after that reached the Rose Bowl.
Alvarez’s Wisconsin record was 118-75-4 (counting an 11-22 start), then the Alvarez foundation continued with Bielema (68-24 from 2006-12), Gary Andersen (19-7, 2013-14) and Chryst.
Luke Fickell, hired away from Cincinnati a couple of weeks ago, is the first non-Alvarez hire as head coach since Alvarez himself. But Wisconsin athletic director Chris McIntosh was an Alvarez offensive tackle — of course he was — in the late 1990s, and Alvarez endorses McIntosh’s selection of Fickell.
“The university and the football program are really important to him,” Alvarez said of McIntosh. “I think he knows the values we’ve established and how we’ve built the program. I think he understands what you can do and can’t do.
“His first hire was an excellent one. (Fickell) will understand the Big Ten and adapt to Wisconsin very quickly.”
Fickell plans to be involved in the Badgers’ bowl game on some level, though Leonhard will remain interim head coach against OSU. And Fickell knows exactly what kind of job he has taken. A job forged by Alvarez.
"I kind of mentioned to some people that I used to not like Coach Alvarez because obviously he was a competitor, and they were tough," Fickell said the day he was hired. “When I got into coaching and the two times I got to meet him, I realized, 'I know why I don't like him ... because we're very similar.'
“My opinion as a player was that every game that we had with them was a tough, physical game … the environment and the culture I know of this place has been phenomenal — from what I've seen from the outside looking in, regardless of who's been the head coach.
"My objective is not to change that. My objective is to try and find ways to grow it and enhance it. … I wouldn't expect it to be much of any different or change in those ways of it being the tough, hard-nosed kind of guys that have made this place special."
Wisconsin is a football place made special by Barry Alvarez, who came to Madison with a plan, and 33 years later, the plan still works.
