Wisconsin Badgers Football - Barry Alvarez and the Badger Revival

The Wisconsin Badgers have, from the beginning

, been a football program where success and failure have come in waves. Though the team's overall 614-465 record is a positive one, it does not tell the entire story of Badger football - a tale that involves not only prolonged periods of success, but prolonged periods of failure as well. In the wake of their successful 1901 campaign, the Badgers went through a three and a half decade time of poor play that was only broken by their undefeated season in 1912. They nearly repeated that era of mediocrity with another after their defeat in the Rose Bowl of 1962 - another three decades of miserable results. However, the 1990 arrival of Barry Alvarez as Wisconsin's Head Coach would signal the return of the Badgers to national prominence.

Alvarez' coaching pedigree

Barry Alvarez had a strong pedigree in college football when he first arrived at Wisconsin. As a player in the 1960s, he was coached by the great Bob Devaney. He later tried his hand as a high school coach in both Nebraska and Iowa, until he was given an assistant coaching position at the University of Iowa under the legendary Hawkeye coach Hayden Fry. A brief tenure as an assistant at the University of Notre Dame completed the Alvarez journey to the Badgers' front door. His arrival at the school in 1990 was to be the beginning of the Badger revival - though the first three seasons of play gave little indication of the outstanding results that would soon follow.

The early years

New coaches at any level often find their first few seasons rough going. Like a ship in the ocean, it takes time to turn around a college football program. In Alvarez and the Badgers' case, it took three years. The first season resulted in only one win, while the next two seasons produced losing records as well - though both were much improved form that initial campaign. Of course, the rumors immediately began to fly that Alvarez would be fired or forced out of his job. He silenced those rumors as soon as the 1993 season got underway.

Three Rose Bowls

During that 1993 campaign, the Badgers became the team to beat in the Big Ten Conference. After winning all but two of their games, the Badgers moved on to Pasadena to compete in the Rose Bowl, where their previous history had been less than successful - in three trips they had yet to win. This fourth trip to the Rose Bowl would prove to be the victory that had so long eluded Wisconsin. Along with that victory came the team's final AP ranking of sixth in the country. The next season saw the Badgers in yet another bowl game, a clear sign that the program was back on solid footing. In Alvarez' final eleven seasons with the team, his Badgers would post winning records in all but two campaigns, go to a bowl game almost every year, and win the conference several times. He even repeated the Rose Bowl win of 1993 by winning it again in both 1998 and 1999. By the time he left the program after the 2005 season, Alvarez had established himself as the most successful of all of Wisconsin's many past coaches.

Wisconsin Badgers Football - Barry Alvarez and the Badger Revival

By: Lloyd Mann

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