When we were young and the Badgers stunk

When guys my age were young, in the 1980s, mainstream University of Wisconsin sports were horrible. Hockey was a powerhouse, but no one I knew played hockey. The football team was a joke, and the basketball team, while flirting with the NIT and delivering some big upsets, wasn't much better.

This drove some of us to root for other college teams that played in big games and postseason tournaments. In basketball, I liked Georgetown and Arizona. In football, I liked Oklahoma and Florida State. Thankfully, for the past 15 years we've had a home team playing important games and winning a good chunk of them.

Our good friend Scott Burch - he liked Penn State. As this picture indicates. Let's hear the cheer now:

"Penn State!" Clap, clap "Penn STATE!" Clap, clap. "Penn STATE!" Clap, clap.

Special thanks to Rob Jansen for sending me this Holy Angels football photo out of the blue this afternoon. The accompanying quote: "I think Burch was the 'get back' guy on the sideline."

West Bend East baseball - '98 videos

Andy emailed me Saturday to let me know that Robby Jansen had begun putting their old West Bend East baseball videos up on YouTube. This one is a sectional game against Cedarburg.



I watched the top of the first, in which my brother (top) goes in as a courtesy runner, takes third on a Mike Mueller single to right, then scores on a double steal. Pretty cool.

For those of you that didn't know, even though Andy's teams never won a state title, they were still pretty damn good, and set the standard for power hitting by a high school team.

Good to Great

About a month ago my company scheduled an offsite strategic planning meeting. Part of our preparation for the planning was to read the Jim Collins book Good to Great, so I did on my flight to Germany. Then the meeting got canceled. Still, it was a good read, and I thought sevearl of the book's main tenets are applicable to Badger sports.

In a nutshell, the book was a scientific analysis of why some companies, like Kimberly-Clark, Phillip Morris, and Walgreens, outperform the market after years of middling results, while other comparable companies plod along. Some of the traits these successful companies shared were humble leaders, people put in the right places, and focusing on something they can be the best in the world at. Let's look at this from a UW athletics point of view.

Humble leaders: I'm going to put Pat Richter in this class. The guy is obviously incredible, from his days as an athlete to his days in business to his days running our athletic department. Yet you never heard him glorifying himself in public. Barry Alvarez had/has an ego, but you didn't hear him using the first person to describe the program's accomplishments. Dick Bennett and Bo Ryan are as self-effacing as they come.

Put the right people in the right places: Credit Donna Shalala for this one, getting Richter on board to lead the resurrection. But there were lots of other people responsible for doing off-the-field work required in a successful athletic program: Al Fish, Joel Maturi, Jamie Pollard, John Chadima, Steve Malchow, Rob Jansen, and lots of others. ;) These are the ones who monetize all of UW athletics' assets, who communicate a consistent message to the public, who hire other talented people at the lower levels.

Do what you can be best at: In the book the author cites Phillip Morris, which decided to be the best damn tobacco company in the world, not one that got distracted by diversifying into peripheral businesses (although they did that successfully later). No matter how you feel about the ethics of this, you can't deny that they've succeeded, and been immensely profitable along the way.

Let's apply this to UW sports. What could they be best in the world, or at least one of the best in the country, at? Alvarez built the football program with the goal of being the best in the country at running the ball. He figured that he could get linemen from the Midwest and a few good backs and build an identity. Sure, many talented receivers languished under this offensive approach, but it lifted the program to three Rose Bowl titles in six years, unprecedented success.

The basketball program under Bennett and Ryan has been the best in the world at defending and controlling tempo. Sure, many talented offensive players have had their games suppressed under this approach, but it lifted the program to a Final Four and a string of 20-win seasons and NCAA appearances that would have been a pipe dream 20 years ago.

Running a successful athletic program is like running a successful business, and we should be thankful that ours has been run as one of the best in the country for the last 18 years.

Big thanks to my brother-in-law Tony Sorgi, er, Nick, whose computer I'm using to write this.

Spotted: Rob Jansen at Cameron Indoor Stadium

Just got this email from Andy:

People who wear gray Wisconsin shirts ... Rob Jansen is one of them: www.uwbadgers.com/blogs/default.aspx?postid=335

I think I've spotted the young man, but I'm not quite sure. Can someone clarify? You'll have to click on the picture below or go to the picture on the UWBadgers site and magnify the photo.


What, you couldn't get seats next to Andy North, Rob?

How was it, the result aside?

Warrick gets the Bone: Thoughts on the Jefferson hit

Robby Jansen, in a comment earlier today, pointed out a passage from Lucas's meandering story on the state of the Big Ten in general that deserves its own post. The passage pertains to Nehemiah Warrick's hit on Kyle Jefferson during Saturday's Wisconsin-Michigan State game. The embedded clip above only shows a replay; this link shows the play as it occurred and about two minutes afterward (wouldn't allow embedding).

... It's just too bad some of his Big Ten fraternity brothers are oblivious to player safety because of their own macho ego trips. Take Michigan State defensive coordinator Pat Narduzzi, who awarded "the Bone'' to safety Nehemiah Warrick for his helmet-to-helmet hit on UW wide receiver Kyle Jefferson. Never mind that the hit was illegal and the Spartans should have been penalized 15 yards, at the very least. The Bone, a real bone, is a team symbol and Warrick gets to carry it around for a week, according to the Detroit News.

It's one thing for television's Neanderthals to pay homage to an illegal hit, but coaches should be above such things. When Michigan State's head coach Mark Dantonio was asked about Warrick's hit on Jefferson, he told the Detroit News, "He (Warrick) put his shoulder on him, I felt. It was shoulder. It was body-body.'' Dantonio may have a vision for his Spartan program. But he needs to get his eyes checked.

My thoughts after seeing that replay 100 times:
-Warrick did not intend to lead with his helmet on Jefferson, but that's how it ended up. It's a fast game. Since intent can't be factored into a call, it should have been a penalty.

-Even if Warrick's intent wasn't malicious, it is inappropriate for the MSU staff to reward him in such a manner that might become public. Maybe a reserved shout-out in a film session, but to give this guy an award after he gave a guy a concussion and making his body go limp for a moment is perverse.

-I think it was Maguire who had the dumbest reaction among the TV guys. It was something like "Why is the crowd booing? It was a clean hit!" Never mind that he was wrong on the second point, and he seems to realize that about five seconds later, but it took one of his partners to point out "I think the crowd is booing the Spartans' reaction to the play while Jefferson lies on the turf."

This brought back memories of that Packer game a few years ago where Warren Sapp laid a ferocious, clean block on Chad Clifton during an interception return, nearly separating his leg from the rest of his body, and then running around the field celebrating. In the replay, Warrick didn't look like he was celebrating too much, and his teammates' congratulations did not seem over the top.

Football is a game played on adrenaline (at least that's what people who have played tell me), and it's natural to be pumped after a big hit. Warrick surely didn't think he had potentially severely hurt Jefferson, just as Sapp didn't. But after the game is over, the film has been watched, show some respect and maybe even regret for the big hit and your victim. Again, not placing blame on Warrick here, but some on those around him.

Two additional notes:
-Doesn't Jefferson's mug shot, with the headband, make him look like a basketball player? He's built more like one anyway ... sort of like Randy Moss. He kind of looks like Rip Hamilton, minus the horrible cornrows.
-The two YouTube clips referenced in this post have about 170,000 views between them. Guess these two are household names now.

Vegas was fun

Before we get too far out from what actually happened, I wanted to post some photos taken by our good friend Molle Polzin from our group's trip to Vegas for the UW-UNLV game. Aside from the fact that we had to hold our breath for 58-1/2 minutes, and we now hold season football tickets from the school that knocked us out of the NCAA tournament in March, it was a great trip. Here's some of Molle's photos:

My lovely wife Jana and I before the game, the last time I smile for about 2 hours and 50 minutes. She and Molle waited in line for the entire second quarter to secure beverages - MVP! MVP!

Me with Will Bottinick and Scott Burch. Notice the guy behind Will making fun of us. We kicked the crap out of him later. The people next to us were from Fennimore, but none of them complimented me on my Luke Swan jersey.


After the game, we were arguably more spent than the players. Yep, fans have it tough. By this time my brother Andy (red hat) and Robby Jansen (to his left) had stopped their renditions of UW band tunes. Thankfully.

Jana and Molle outside O'Shea's, our dive casino/bar hangout ($2 Miller Lite!). The girls debated whether or not is was impolite to bend over to be closer to the leprechaun's height. What do you think?

Me, Jana, Molle, and Cap Times beat reporter Jim Polzin, who went 1-0 with his online coverage of the game for the TCT website. Later we saw The Producers at the Paris, starring Tony Danza (no, really). And no, there are no physics diplomas on our walls; otherwise we would have been hanging out at the Bellagio.

Jim, me, Burch, Jana and Tim Toohey enjoying a light moment, which were many.

Other dudes in attendance were my brother Butch (Mat) Falkowski (who somehow called Donovan's naked bootleg TD run three plays ahead) and Matt Schwalbach, who heroically shouldered the bulk of the organizational duties - thanks dude! Unfortunately, all the pictures of them were in appropriate for posting on a website I plan on showing my mother.