As most know, Barry Alvarez is the Wisconsin athletic director. Prior to becoming the a.d., he coached the Badgers for a good number of years. He was an outstanding college coach and very similar to Frank Broyles, though Alvarez is said to be much more hands on, than even Frank. According to some buddies of mine from Wisconsin, Alvarez may have had much to do with the assistants that Bielema hired, as well as their firing. He also supposedly game planned on a weekly basis with Bielema and the assistants. Again, for the most part, this is only buddy talk.
Yet, in 2012, Houston Nutt’s offensive line coach, Mike Markuson, was hired to coach the same position at Wisconsin. He was fired after only two games. Given the absolute lack of coaching of the o line in Fayetteville for the past two years, in my opinion, Kurt Anderson should have been let go a long time ago. He has no idea what in the hell he’s doing and seems to be handing out raffle tickets to assign o line positions, with players and positions changing almost weekly.
If BarryAlvarez happened to be in Fayetteville, still “coaching up” the head coach, Anderson would have been gone after game two of last season. Austin Allen would also be in much better shape, today. Interesting enough, when Bielema left for Arkansas, Alvarez appointed himself as the head guy for a game and coached the Badgers in the Rose Bowl. Hands on sorta guy or aka the real head coach?
At any rate, from day one, Bret shows up in Fayetteville, bragging about his B10 record and everything that “he” had accomplished. No disrespect to Jeff Long, because it looked like a pretty good sell, at the time.
However, to cut to the chase, after almost 5 years, Bret is in way over his head [without Alvarez], in my opinion.
If so, Long needs to do something about it.