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Wisconsin 45, Illinois 7 Postgame
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<blockquote data-quote="altgeld88" data-source="post: 1551698" data-attributes="member: 2886"><p>I'd say you're pretty generous in using "consistent." I see only '82-'85 and then '88-'91. In the former period, White primed the pump of a moribund program with a lot of JuCo transfers from CA, then got slammed with sanctions. In the latter, Mackovic had us relevant for three straight seasons. That's it, however. I believe we'd have to go back to the early '60s, pre Slush Fund debacle to find consistently respectable teams. And even then.... can't be ar$sed to look it up, however.</p><p></p><p>I go back to my observation I've made to friends over the years that if you'd told me in late 1989 that Wisconsin football would be in the Rose Bowl before 2000 I would have bet five figures against it. If you bet me in addition that the basketball team would be in a Final Four before 2000 I'd have added a zero (if I had the cash.) They were annually awful for years in both sports. I don't think Don Morton won more than five games in his three seasons as football coach before he was fired in '89. Apart from a successful spurt in the early '80s (coincident with ours) they were between mediocre and terrible going back to the early '70s. Basketball was a joke, too. When I was a senior in 1988 I recall Wisconsin cut several non-revenue sports because football and basketball generated insufficient revenue. The Field House where the hoops team played had holes in the roof they couldn't afford to repair. Fans told of snow falling on them in the rafters.</p><p></p><p>And yet. Chancellor Donna Shalala's conviction that having competitive football and basketball programs paid huge dividends for them. I believe she brought in a new AD, a senior marketing guy from Miller Brewing, who turned it all around. Hired Alvarez, and promoted Dick Bennett from a satellite UW campus. Raised large amounts of money from the Kohls and others. And there they are, in the 1997 Finial Four, and winning the 1998 Rose Bowl with one loss. And if you're a college student today you've not been alive when Wisconsin football and basketball have not been not only annually relevant but consistently among the top programs in the nation in both sports.</p><p></p><p>My solace is that Whitman seems like a solid AD and should maximize the chance of us luring a younger, more ambitious coach to Champaign. Where we are now seems to be the result of Thomas and the long tail of the Guenther years.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="altgeld88, post: 1551698, member: 2886"] I'd say you're pretty generous in using "consistent." I see only '82-'85 and then '88-'91. In the former period, White primed the pump of a moribund program with a lot of JuCo transfers from CA, then got slammed with sanctions. In the latter, Mackovic had us relevant for three straight seasons. That's it, however. I believe we'd have to go back to the early '60s, pre Slush Fund debacle to find consistently respectable teams. And even then.... can't be ar$sed to look it up, however. I go back to my observation I've made to friends over the years that if you'd told me in late 1989 that Wisconsin football would be in the Rose Bowl before 2000 I would have bet five figures against it. If you bet me in addition that the basketball team would be in a Final Four before 2000 I'd have added a zero (if I had the cash.) They were annually awful for years in both sports. I don't think Don Morton won more than five games in his three seasons as football coach before he was fired in '89. Apart from a successful spurt in the early '80s (coincident with ours) they were between mediocre and terrible going back to the early '70s. Basketball was a joke, too. When I was a senior in 1988 I recall Wisconsin cut several non-revenue sports because football and basketball generated insufficient revenue. The Field House where the hoops team played had holes in the roof they couldn't afford to repair. Fans told of snow falling on them in the rafters. And yet. Chancellor Donna Shalala's conviction that having competitive football and basketball programs paid huge dividends for them. I believe she brought in a new AD, a senior marketing guy from Miller Brewing, who turned it all around. Hired Alvarez, and promoted Dick Bennett from a satellite UW campus. Raised large amounts of money from the Kohls and others. And there they are, in the 1997 Finial Four, and winning the 1998 Rose Bowl with one loss. And if you're a college student today you've not been alive when Wisconsin football and basketball have not been not only annually relevant but consistently among the top programs in the nation in both sports. My solace is that Whitman seems like a solid AD and should maximize the chance of us luring a younger, more ambitious coach to Champaign. Where we are now seems to be the result of Thomas and the long tail of the Guenther years. [/QUOTE]
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