UW football and basketball books

The holiday break gave me a chance to read two other Wisconsin sports books by UW alum Dave Anderson. The books cover the Badgers' football and basketball history.

While these books will help fill out the UW section of my bookshelf, I can't in good faith recommend buying them - save the combined $30. Instead, buy The World Without Us (read it over Thanksgiving, still getting my thoughts together for a review), and download the history sections of the media guides posted at uwbadgers.com. Because that's all these books really are: a collection of team, stadium, and athlete pictures from the UW archives accompanied by redundant captions that often contain errors. There's no new analysis or historical context.

The first thing I said to Jana about them was "I can't believe this guy got paid to put these books together," and then kicked myself for not getting there first. In fairness, Anderson probably didn't set out to write a Halbertsam-esaue tome about his alma mater's athletics, and my expectations shouldn't have been to receive anything along those lines. Also, having been exposed to so many media guides over the years, I probably know more of this historical stuff than the average fan.

Anderson does make the good point that while the last 15 years or so have undeniably been a Golden Era in UW athletics, it wasn't always as bad as the preceding couple decades. In fact, UW athletics in the first three or four decades of the 20th century were pretty damn good, with plenty of conference titles, All-Americans, and even a few national titles. Then we hit a 50-year dry spell with a good season here and there.

What happened? Good question, and one that's not answered in these books. My thought is that the coaches of the times did not adapt quickly enough to changes in strategy and recruiting; the radical/turbulent nature of Madison during the '60s and '70s scared off many kids who weren't up for that kind of college experience; and a bad football team drags down everything else. Without the '93 Rose Bowl, does the Kohl Center get built?

Also took the time to read Game Day: Wisconsin Football by Athlon Sports. A much better book, it had lots of color photos and in-depth sections on players, coaches, games, rivalries, etc. If you're a true Badgers fan, you need to learn about Pat O'Dea, Pat Harder, Dave Schreiner, Crazylegs Hirsch, Alan Ameche, the Hard Rocks defense, Dan Lanphear, Ron Vander Kelen, Pat Richter the athlete, Dennis Lick, Ray Snell, Mike Webster, Tim Krumrie, Matt Vanden Boom, Al Toon, Ivy Williamson, Harry Stuhldreher, Milt Bruhn, Dave McClain, and the other men who made Badger football great in previous generations.

I recommend taking the time to learn UW athletics history. It does, in fact, predate Barry Alvarez and Dick Bennett.

When were they all good? From Mr. Pintens

Last week I made a reference to the fact that the Badgers and Brewers have really never been good at the same time during our lifetime, and if you lump the Packers into the discussion it becomes an even trickier needle to find in the proverbial haystack. Leave it to Craig Pintens to find out that, for one more reason, 1982 was awesome.

Great job on the blog. I usually check it out once a day on the RSS feed. I know you had brought up when the Packers, Brewers, and Badgers have had a winning record in the same year. Well it really wasn't too hard to research when all the teams involved have collectively sucked for the majority of our lifetime, but we are looking at high times right now.

The last time all three had a winning record was 1982 as the Pack went 5-3-1 during the strike year and the Badgers (Al Toon and Wright or too early?) went 7-5. The only other time since 1975 was 1978 with the Pack going 8-7-1 and 5-4-2.

Most normal people could give two sh!ts about my five minute research project, but I needed a slight diversion today.

Keep up the great work and keep the Bucks basketball and starting up of the professional women's soccer chatter to a minimum as I don't think your audience cares.

Thanks for the research and kind words, Craig, they are appreciated. The over/under on when Randy Wright's name would first appear in my blog was two weeks, so we're a little early there. From that team, which beat Kansas State in the soon-to-be Poulan Weedeater Independence Bowl for the first bowl victory in school history, other stars were Tim Krumrie (above - his tackles totals were ridiculous for a noseguard - still holds the school record for solo tackles), Darryl Sims (got to know him a little when he was an assistant at Oshkosh), David Greendwood, and Matt VandenBoom. That was actually Toon's first year playing, only had 30-some catches.

(Aside: searching for an image of Randy Wright I discovered that there is in fact an adult movie actress named Randi Wright, who sometimes goes by Randy Wright - probably for the Wisconsin release of her flicks.)

All I remember about the Packers that year was Jan Stenerud kicking OT field goals and Lynn Dickey hobbling around the field throwing bombs.

The Brewers in '82? Anything memorable there?

Next topic: Why did Briana Scurry start over Hope Solo in goal for the U.S. in its World Cup semifinal loss to Brazil? Discuss.