Pressure is mounting for the committee in charge of the decision on who will take over as the next Athletic Director for the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For a program with such a storied history of athletics, it was essential to make sure they had representatives of each of its major sports, but in doing so, they might've neglected some of the most important potential committee members.
While football is far and away the most popular and frankly, profitable sport for the Wisconsin Badgers, Committee Chair Lauren Bishop only appointed one true representative from the football world: Indianapolis Colts GM and former Wisconsin football player, Chris Ballard.
As pointed out by ESPN Radio host Evan Cohen, appearing on The Jump Around podcast, arguably the most influential voice in Wisconsin college football history, Barry Alvarez, was left off the list. He posed an important question: "Has football at UW-Madison ever been good without Barry Alvarez involved?"
Alvarez, who holds the program records for total coaching wins and longest tenure for a head coach, finished his Wisconsin Badgers coaching career with a 119–72–4 record and went on to serve as Wisconsin's Athletic Director for 16 years after that. His absence from the Athletic Director search committee leaves the door open for questions about their process in both assembling the committee and where their priorities lie in the search.
Barry Alvarez's omission from Wisconsin Athletic Director search committee leaves questions about UW's priorities.
In his heyday, Alvarez had a say in every single major decision for Wisconsin's football program. He was an on-field culture setter who found a way to win no matter the odds. He helped raise the program's national profile, attracting future NFL stars and creating new Badgers legends through his recruitment and the standard he upheld. So why wasn't he included in the search?
Cohen also suggested several other big names with ties to the state of Wisconsin and Badgers athletics: Barstool's Big Cat a.k.a. Dan Katz — a proud UW-Madison alumnus whose national profile extends far beyond his on-air audience. Cohen also suggested two other all-time Wisconsin offensive linemen in Packers legend Mark Tauscher and 10-time NFL Pro Bowler Joe Thomas. His other suggestion was Donna Shalala, who was Chancellor of UW-Madison for five years and later served in the Carter and Clinton administrations. Each is uniquely positioned to aid the search, but none were ultimately included.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the group assembled to find Wisconsin's next Athletics Director. They're each qualified to contibute to the search in their own ways. But the decision to omit some key figures over the years is certainly noteworthy — especially in Alvarez's case.
Maybe they want to separate the search from past iterations of Wisconsin leadership. There may also be private factors that we're not privy to publicly. Either way, it's worth consideration that some extremely valuable persepctvies might've been left by the wayside. Only time will tell whether they made the right call or not.
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