WolverineInCbus

December 5th, 2012 at 10:01 AM ^

It would definitely add interest to the game but it seems very unorthodox. It could work though as long as the coordinators are still there. Playing for a Hall of Famer might even fire up the team a little bit more. We will see

WAKA FLOCKA WO…

December 5th, 2012 at 10:11 AM ^

perhaps this underscores the reason for which bret left wisconsin: this was never going to be his team, always barry's. maybe he wanted a program where people would think of the team's success as a result of bret bielema, not the previous coach's. just a thought.

Erik_in_Dayton

December 5th, 2012 at 10:21 AM ^

File this under a "my cousin's-wife's-brother's-dog's-groomer knows so-and-so" story if you like, but my best friend roomed with the son of OSU's offensive coordinator in the late '90's.  The son said that the Big Ten coaching fraternity got along really well with only two exceptions: everyone thought Saban and Alvarez were jerks.  Alvarez's ego is quite large, he said. 

M-Wolverine

December 5th, 2012 at 3:44 PM ^

I know the Michigan staff couldn't stand Saban.  But then, that's no big deal considering his whole staff at MSU didn't like him enough to go with him to LSU.

I got the impression that Lloyd got along with Alvarez, but it might have been more polite coaching banter.

LSAClassOf2000

December 5th, 2012 at 10:14 AM ^

Here's TwinCities.com's write-up on the subject - (LINK)

Supposedly, a source close to Wisconsin said that Alvarez does not intend to let Bielema coach the Rose Bowl and that he might take on the role as a "figurehead", if you will, during the game and seach. There was some buzz on Twitter about this as well. It also talks about who the in-staff favorites might be, if Wisconsin decided to hire from within.

 

highestman

December 5th, 2012 at 10:46 AM ^

Yes, perhaps I could have elaborated more, but thats what I was hearing on the radio.  There's no way he will be actually calling plays from the sideline.  If it happens it would be a Hoke-esque no headset performance, with even less impact on any actual X's O's strategizing.  Definetly just a figurehead type deal.

WolverineHistorian

December 5th, 2012 at 10:17 AM ^

I'll give Alvarez a ton of credit for turning Wisconsin from a 100 year dumpster fire into what they are now. But that 3-0 record in the Rose Bowl came against a UCLA team with a GERG type defense (giving up 40 points a game) and a unraked Stanford team coached by Ty Willingham who had a 69-17 loss to unraked Texas and to a 3-7 San Jose State team. They weren't exactly playing Vince Young and Pete Carrol's cheating #1 USC teams like we were.

I say let him coach the Rose Bowl. I want to see him coach against a legit team out there.

mGrowOld

December 5th, 2012 at 10:31 AM ^

In the words of the great Bill Parcells "You are what your record says you are".

Hey I'm no Alverez fan by any stretch but Bo managed to lose a few Rose Bowls to teams vastly inferior to his (see 72 v Stanford & 90 v USC to name a couple) and always struggled out there.  

thisisme08

December 5th, 2012 at 10:34 AM ^

Because its 1000+ miles away from A2 and its a home game for the "visitors".

Yes, I am a youngin' so I dont understand the pagentry that used to be associated with the Rose Bowl which is why I wish we would have dumped it when the playoff stucture was announced.  The B1G has always struggled at the RB and always will when its a game played in the Pac 12's backyard. 

Don

December 5th, 2012 at 11:12 AM ^

That excuse gets trotted out by Big Ten apologists constantly, and it's completely bunk. If travel was such a huge impediment and if the RB was a home game for the PAC10, why was the Big Ten dominant in the Rose Bowl until the early '60s?

The fact is that the huge population increases in the Sun Belt that got started after WWII and which accelerated in the '60s and '70s included California and the rest of the west coast. If you check the rosters of the Rose Bowl teams that have beaten us, a huge percentage of those players have come from California, which, like the South, has the advantage of good year-round weather and a large population of great athletes, both black and white.

thisisme08

December 5th, 2012 at 1:06 PM ^

So the 12 year period from '48-'60 is your basis for the Big 10 being awesome in the RB and forgetting about the next 52 years?

The next 52 years, excluding matchups that did not feature Big 10/Pac 10 teams saw the conference go 16-31, thats not exactly a steller record so yes I do think travel has something to do with it.    

Is your point about the population shift valid? Yes, of which we are currently seeing with the SEC's dominance but at least during the 60/80s I would have thought that Michigans name recognition was pretty steller to the point they should have been able to cherry pick the very best of that WC talent had they attempted to recruit someone, so you cannot tell me that talent alone has caused the PAC 10 be so good in the RB when their record in other bowls is about as good as the Big 10's.

 

lilpenny1316

December 5th, 2012 at 2:45 PM ^

Also, if you dig deeper, you'll see that some of those games from this century featured the top team in the Pac-10 against our 2nd or 3rd best team.  You're going to tell me that Illinois would've beaten USC in 2008 if that game was in Soldier Field?  And as much as I loved the 2006 team, that was still the 2nd best team in the conference going up against USC.  OSU has been the flagship program of the Big Ten since 2002 and they never played USC.  

Finally, the travel has nothing to do with it.  These kids get out there a week early, practice, go to Disneyland and play a football game.  All their family goes out there.  

Better prepared teams win bowl games.  We did not have the better team most of those times (except when we had to play on 98-yard fields or get phantom clipping calls against us).

Tater

December 5th, 2012 at 7:52 PM ^

The Big Ten was dominant through the early 60's because they were so much better than the Pac teams that the road disadvantage didn't matter.  

A great example of the road disadvantage: in '90, Bo heard officials laughing about the bogus holding call on the fake punt that could have ended up winning the game for Michigan when he walked past their locker room.  One of them said something like,"There's no way I was gonna let that SOB win his last game here."

This anecdote, written by Bo himself, is in an extra chapter of the later version of his first autobiography.  

 

Erik_in_Dayton

December 5th, 2012 at 10:38 AM ^

...but I'll be deep in the cold, cold ground before I recognize Wisconsin as a great Rose Bowl team (or before I recognize Missouri as a state).

Question:  Was '90 USC inferior?  The only thing I remember about that game is being really sick during it.  I thought they were pretty good, though. 

WolverineHistorian

December 5th, 2012 at 10:50 AM ^

I'll give you that 1 point loss to Stanford in the 72 Rose Bowl. But that USC team we faced in Bo's last game had equal talent with us. And let's not forget the phantom holding call that went against us on Chris Stapleton's fake punt in the 4th quarter as we were going in for the winning score.

It's probably not fair to compare us with them anyway because no team has had the shitty luck we have had out there. We've had practices rained out, countless bad calls go against, fluke plays go against us, we've lost players to injury during the game, heck, Bo even had a massive heart attack the night before the game once. The Rose Bowl hates Michigan.

Now I need a drink.

Don

December 5th, 2012 at 11:06 AM ^

I've been convinced for over 20 years that it was Bo's misfortune to coach in a conference that had the tie-in with the PAC-10; Bo's dominant teams of the 70s simply did not match up well with the style of play that USC, Washington, and UCLA had. If you've got active DLs and fast LBs—which those PAC10 teams all had—defending an option-based offense isn't that difficult. I don't think it's any accident that Bo's first Rose Bowl champion team was also his first team that employed a fully pro-set offense featuring a reliable, accurate QB, stellar WRs, and a huge (for the era) OL that cleared huge holes for RBs like Woolfolk, Ricks, and Edwards.

If Bo had coached Michigan in the old SWC or SEC of that era, he would have taken us to multiple Cotton and Sugar Bowl victories and probably at least one NC because the teams he would have faced were also predominantly option-based attacks.

Getting back to the question of talent in the PAC 10 back then, I read an article in the old Ann Arbor News in the early '80s which pointed out that USC had more players in the NFL than UM and OSU had combined at that time. Obviously the talent distribution has substantially evened itself out by now, but back then USC was virtually an NFL factory.

Don

December 5th, 2012 at 10:38 AM ^

A topic near and dear to my heart, MGrow... my view has always been that the PAC10 teams we faced were always ridiculously underrated by midwestern media and Michigan fans in particular. Just for example, the '89 USC team had a guy named Junior Seau on it. Also Mark Carrier and Dan Owens, two guys who played in the NFL, Carrier as a Pro Bowl safety, Owens as a DL for the Lions.

mGrowOld

December 5th, 2012 at 11:01 AM ^

I lived and breathed through each of the Rose Bowls from 1970 on.  Here are the ones I think we should've won but didnt: 72, 78 & 90.  I think we could've won either 76 or 77 based on talent alone but breaks, refs and everything else went against us.  

I didnt even mention the 78 game against Washington.  Bo didnt open up the offense until the 2nd half when we were already way done and Ricky almost brought us back (damn it Stan Edwards catch the freaking ball).  

My only point both Don & Historian is that we can say BA caught some match up breaks to go 3-0 but the fact is he's 3-0.  And we lost a shit-ton of games out there.

AVPBCI

December 5th, 2012 at 10:52 AM ^

i live in milwaukee,

 

names being brought up

 

chryst, bevell, childress, the current badgers DC , and Jim Tressel