University of Wisconsin Athletic Director Barry Alvarez has led a full football life. As the Badgers Head Coach he won three Big Ten Championships, three Rose Bowls and was named the National Coach of the Year in 1993. Prior to compiling a 118-74-4 record at Wisconsin, Alvarez played linebacker at the University of Nebraska under Hall of Fame coach Bob Devaney. In this exclusive interview with FootballMatters.org, he talks about his philosophy as an AD, as a coach, and why he isn’t surprised by his success.
FootballMatters: When you look back on your career in football as a coach and a player, what are some of your earliest memories about why the sport was special to you?
Barry Alvarez: I was very fortunate. I can go all the way back to when I started playing youth football. I had a coach that was outstanding as far as teaching fundamentals and teaching the game the way it was supposed to be played. I also had a very good high school coach and I learned an important life lesson from him.
We were a good team but we were a small school, and in the two scrimmages before each season he’d pit us against the biggest schools he could find. We’d drive a long way to meet these teams and we were a ragtag outfit. We were right in the middle of camp and we’d show up to one of these big schools with thirty guys and they’d have one hundred. We’d be in our sweat-stained sweatshirts over our pads and they’d come out in their game uniforms.
I remember we’d be walking off the bus to the field and they’d come running out of their field house, yelling, one hundred strong. After we’d get on the field our coach would pull us aside and he’d say, “I don’t care how many players they have. I don’t care what uniform they’re wearing. They can only put 11 on the field. We’re going to put 11 on the field. Our 11 are better than their 11. Our 11 are going to kick their butts.”
And we did. I learned a lot from those moments.
FM: How important is it to have a strong mentor like that early in your football career; someone who shows you that anything is possible in the sport and in life if you work hard enough?
BA: You know, I relate back to a question I was asked during an interview when I was going into the College Football Hall of Fame. I grew up in a small mining town right outside of Pittsburgh and one of the sportswriters asked me, “Does it surprise you, coming from the small mining town that you came from, that you’re going in to the College Football Hall of Fame?”
I said, “No, it doesn’t surprise me at all. I was very fortunate. The coaches that I had growing up were excellent. I played for a Hall of Famer at Nebraska in Coach Bob Devaney, one of the greatest coaches ever. I learned from him. I learned from his assistants who were outstanding, including Tom Osborne, another Hall of Famer. My first college job was with Hayden Fry, a Hall of Famer, and Lou Holtz, a Hall of Famer. There aren’t many people that have the background that I had, where I was fortunate enough to be around the coaches I was fortunate enough to be around. Why would it surprise me considering I was around all those great coaches, you know?”
FM: That really is an incredible roster of coaches to learn from. What coaching traits did you pull from each of them as you embarked on your own career?
BA: I think one of the most important things I learned is that they all did things differently. There’s not just one way to get the job done. You have to have a plan. The plan has to be sound. It has to fit your personality, and it has to fit where you are. We couldn’t do what we did at Notre Dame at Wisconsin because of the types of kids we consistently recruited. I had to look at the type of guys that we could recruit, year in and year out at Wisconsin. That means big guys. Our state has provided us lots of lineman. Big people.
Occasionally we’ll get some speed, like a Melvin Gordon or a Michael Bennett who was a world-class sprinter, but for the most part, we’d have to go out of state to find those type of guys. With that in mind, you build your plan, and design your program on being physical. Being big. Running the ball. Being sound. Good fundamentals. Not beating yourself. That carries over to off the field; being disciplined, being demanding, holding people accountable – that all ties together.
FM: When you talk about tying things together off the field, that’s important because even though you had sixty or seventy of your guys play in the NFL, which is a lot, a vast majority won’t. Is that why you work those life lessons into your coaching?
BA: Yes. We talk to our athletes all the time. We tell them, “You’re not all going to play in the NFL. If you do, the average tenure is three years. Now you’re 24, 25 and you have to go out and make a living. You have to prepare yourself.” We talk about graduating and preparing yourself for the future. Those are all things that we talk about and take great pride in.
FM: In your career as an Athletic Director, do you take that mentality and spread it across the entire campus?
BA: What I try to do as an athletic director, especially with the coaches and the athletes, is to run things very much like I ran the team. Most coaches have tunnel vision. They’re worried about their team and their sport. I take a look at all of our coaches. We’ve got coaches that win National Championships, Big Ten Championships, and have been very successful. What I try to do is make sure I get them around one another, so they’re comfortable with one another and they get to know one another. I talk to them about the resources we have right on the campus. As a coach, if you have an issue, somebody on this campus, including me, has lived that and made that decision in coaching. These are people you can use as a resource, to go sit and talk to. We try and encourage our athletes to support the other teams as well and to know the other teams. We try to just build a big family with our 900 student-athletes and our 23 head coaches.
FM: And that entire philosophy comes from your football background. How integral has that background been to your overall life?
BA: As I look at my life, I can look at football as giving me everything I have today. I was able to earn a scholarship, I got a great education at Nebraska, I met my wife there, I have three kids and eight grandkids. What I’ve done, my whole life, is because of football. Football has given me everything. The things that I’ve accomplished and the life that I’ve led has all been because of football.
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