Wisconsin Badgers' Barry Alvarez to Receive Rose Bowl Raise

Just when you started to feel bad for Wisconsin Badgers‘ athletic director Barry Alvarez for having his head football coach Brett Bielema— a man who led the Badgers to three straight Rose Bowls– bolted for the Arkansas Razorbacks vacant coaching job, something like this surfaces.

Alvarez, a former Badger head coach turned athletic director, is set to make $118,500 for coaching Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl against the Stanford Cardinal.

Wait, what? Yes, over $100 grand for coaching one game– that’s 60 minutes of football. Granted, he has to go through practices with the team before the actual game and spend a lot of his time scouting Stanford and making sure his team is prepared, but come on.

Well, maybe he’s a bit low on cash and the university is trying to help him out, right? Wrong. Alvarez was approved for a $1 million salary last year, making him one of the highest paid athletic directors in college football. Quite the gig for a retired college coach.

He is one of the best coaches in Wisconsin history so he should have no trouble adjusting to the head coaching spot that he will take in the January Rose Bowl game.  He was the Badgers’ head coach from 1990-2005, his one and only career head coaching job.

He was 118-73-4 all-time as the head coach and went down as one of the more decorated coaches in the program’s history.  He led the Badgers to 11 bowl games in 16 seasons as coach and went 3-0 in Rose Bowl games.  He finished his career with an 8-3 in bowl games and was one of the more successful coaches in that regard.

He is the winningest coach in Wisconsin football history and seems to be a solid candidate to coach the team’s most important game of the season. It’s a tall task to ask a coach who hasn’t put the headset on in over five years, trying to coach an underachieving 8-5 Badger team to their first Rose Bowl victory since 2000.

Alvarez was the coach in 2000 when they won their last Rose Bowl and who did they play? None other than the Stanford Cardinal. Maybe the man knows what he’s doing.

Oh, and if he wins he gets an extra $50,000 to add to that $100 grand total. Poor guy.