Harvard has won more Rose Bowl games than Wisconsin, which means Barry Alvarez could make history. Just don’t ask him to dwell on it.
“This is for the university, for the fans,” he says. “This is for the players, especially the five who have been here since I started. This isn’t for me. Four years ago, that’s a long time.”
Four years ago, Alvarez was defensive coordinator for Lou Holtz with Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish had just won the Orange Bowl, and Pat Richter, Wisconsin’s new athletic director, was waiting in his Miami hotel room for the phone to ring.
“My friends said I was crazy,” Alvarez recalls. “But I said yes. It’s no big deal.”
Tell that to Richter, who inherited a department $2.1 million in debt. Win or lose Saturday against UCLA, the Badgers are guaranteed a $6.5 million appearance fee. Richter interviewed several head coaching candidates before settling on Alvarez, because of his enthusiasm. With little to sell except that personality, Alvarez went recruiting, and half the 22 starters are from his first class.
Tell the people back on campus that it doesn’t matter, if there are any people back on campus. In Madison, the only sports worth watching used to be on ice. That included 1990, Alvarez’s rookie season, when the Badgers were 1-10. Football players wore their letter jackets inside out, and crowd control wasn’t a problem at Camp Randall Stadium because 30,000 empty seats don’t push, shove or get overserved.
Tell the stuffed shirts and blue blazers who run the Rose Bowl that Wisconsin’s visit represents business as usual. When Michigan is here, familiarity breeds staleness. However, thousands of touring Badger fans have changed all that. A lot of them got fleeced by ticket agencies and won’t enter the stadium. But they’re everywhere else. I saw a man, he danced with his wife. In the middle of a freeway during bumper-to-bumper traffic. They wore cheddar helmets. Honest.
“It’s crazy,” says Alvarez. “It’s so crazy that we can’t move around the lobby where we’re staying. Or, where we used to be staying. We’re changing hotels.”
If you remember the Badgers’ last appearance in this “granddaddy of them all,” you probably can share the memory with grandchildren. It was New Year’s Day, 1963, and it might have been the most theatrical Rose Bowl of them all. Quarterback Ron Vander Kelen threw for 401 yards, 203 during a gripping fourth-quarter surge, often to Richter. But Wisconsin lost 42-37 to USC. Wisconsin has lost all three trips to Pasadena. Wisconsin has won only one bowl game ever, the Independence in 1982.
“It would be nice to fix that,” Alvarez says. “The perception that Wisconsin is a loser.”
Alvarez was an assistant at Iowa for two Rose Bowls, but thankfully he didn’t borrow all of mentor Hayden Fry’s policies.
“Sure, we went to Disneyland,” Alvarez says. “We’ve been to a lot of functions. What am I going to do, lock these guys in their rooms? This is an experience, and I want the players to enjoy it. But they’re ready for the game. They’re anxious. It will be a rush when we first take the field. We’ll see all that red in the stands. I just hope we can keep UCLA from making big plays, control the ball, do what we did to get here.”
The Badgers might lose again, but probably not because of stage fright. They prepared for Saturday’s spectacle by beating Michigan State in Tokyo. Pac-10 teams traditionally teach Big 10 foes a New Year’s Day lesson on how speed kills, and UCLA does have a fabulous receiver in J.J. Stokes. But Alvarez isn’t just smoking bratwurst when he says the Badgers have confronted and conquered a variety of opponents.
“We face teams that use one back and throw it all over the lot,” he says. “Plus, we’re the home team against UCLA. We get the big locker room. We’re 3,000 miles from home, but we’re the home team. That makes me feel good.”
Madison’s miracle man doesn’t sound worried. If he beats UCLA, he ties Harvard.
