Barry has left the building

Yesterday was Barry Alvarez's last day as the head football coach at the University of Wisconsin. Alvarez led his Badgers to an impressive 24-10 victory over the Auburn Tigers, who were a 10 point favorite over the Badgers. The Badgers dominated the game, outgaining the Tigers by a substantial margin, controlling the lines of scrimmage on both sides of the ball and, all in all, playing a more physical game against a team that was widely regarded as superior.

In order to understand the impact that Alvarez has had at Wisconsin, you need to understand how terrible the Badgers were prior to his arrival in 1990. The Badgers of the late 1980s were a horrible team, overmatched physically and lacking fundamentals of the game. There was a game that was especially emblematic of this era, when the mighty Miami Hurricanes came to Madison and gave Bucky Badger a 51-3 whipping, cavorting around Camp Randall Stadium at will and bashing the Badgers without mercy. The iconic ABC announcer Keith Jackson was in the building to describe the carnage and by game's end he was muttering about how the Badgers didn't look like a major college football program. For the Badgers and their fans, it was a humiliating moment. At that point, if you had predicted that by 1999, the Badgers would have won shares of 3 Big Ten titles and would have won 3 Rose Bowls, you would have been considered a lunatic. But that's exactly what happened.

The best part about Barry's last game was the last drive of the game. The Badgers received the ball at their own 1 yard line with about 9 minutes left in the game. If Auburn had made a defensive play, they would have been in position to score quickly and rally for a win. But the Badgers methodically drove the ball down the field, running and passing in equal measure and never going out of bounds, keeping the clock running. With less than a minute left, the Badgers had reached Auburn's 1 yard line, in a position to score yet another touchdown, having driven the length of the football field. The Badgers then took a knee and quarterback John Stocco ran over to the sideline in celebration, handing the ball to Alvarez. The drive was workmanlike, relentless, disciplined and completely successful. Just like the Badgers have been under Barry Alvarez.