BADGER ENVY

               As a fan of Chicago’s sports teams, the notion that life is unfair came to me early. How could some (say, New York Yankees’ fans) have so much while we have so little? I frequently asked myself.

               Then I grew up a bit and went away to college, at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, my state’s flagship U. There the lesson was repeated, only with supporters of Ohio State University and the University of Michigan in the roles of the fortunate. Sixty-plus years later those two institutions still ride high in what is called the Big 10 Conference even though it has 14 members. Even Yankees have had bad stretches in that span, for heaven’s sake.

Worse, though, is that the teams of the university of the state just north of my homeland have prospered for all of this century and more, while my Illini continue to founder (and flounder). I’m talking about Wisconsin, which lately has been the foremost challenger to the Big Ten’s Big Two. In basketball as well as football, the Badgers sup with the mighty while the Illini scrounge the dumpsters for scraps. Oooo, that hurts.

The injustice of this situation is easily seen. Illinois’s population of about 12.7 million is more than twice Wisconsin’s 5.8 M, and Illinois contains the vast Chicago area, long a prep-sports hotbed. Wisconsin is a bucolic place known mostly for cheese, lakes and brandy consumption. If we Ilinoisians think of it at all it’s as a vacation spot, somewhere convenient where we can catch a few fish and hurry home before boredom sets in.

               UW used to be pretty much a sports patsy, with bad teams far outnumbering the good. Then Barry Alvarez came along. Sinister looking (he favors dark glasses) and someone with no Wisconsin ties (he’s from Pennsylvania, his college was Nebraska and he was an assistant coach at Iowa and Notre Dame), he took over Badger football in 1990, and after three losing seasons put them on a track that, now, has led to annual bowl games and conference-title contention. In basketball, the initial magic man was Dick Bennett, whose tenure was short (1995-2001) but whose influence was long, extending to this day.

 Both men succeeded by building on the state’s native strengths.  Alvarez quickly learned that Wisconsin produced an abundance of heifer-sized linemen but few swift “skilled” players, so he fashioned a tough defense and ground-based offense and opened a recruiting pipeline that brought in swifties from the East, mainly New Jersey and New York. Bennett’s plan centered on defense and a disciplined, pass-first offense that could succeed without recruiting classes studded with the McDonald All Americans the state rarely produces. Derided as “white ball,” and leading to low-scoring games, his system not only produced victories but also was more easily replicable than schemes based on individual talents. 

                The Wisconsin plan in both sports emphasizes continuity of style and local loyalties. Alvarez, now the school’s athletics director, might have been an outlander but he planted a coaching tree that produced his immediate successor Bret Bieleman (2006-12), who’d been one of his assistants, and, since 2015, Paul Chryst, who also was promoted from the Badger ranks. Wisconsin football teams look pretty much the same every season, grinding out 300-yard rushing games while squelching the opposition. The school hasn’t had a losing football season since 2001. It’s 2-0 so far this year and ranked 14th nationally.

               The home-grown angle has been even stronger on the basketball side. Before coming to Madison Bennett was a Wisconsin high-school coach who’d moved to the college ranks through UW branches in Stevens Point and Green Bay. His successor, Bo Ryan, followed the same career path, putting in 20-plus years coaching in places like Dominican College in Racine and UW Platteville and Milwaukee before ascending to Madison in 2001 at the advanced age of 53. He also followed Bennett’s defense-first game schemes. When Ryan stepped down in 2015, after compiling a 364-130 won-lost record, winning four Big !0 championships and taking two teams to the NCAA Final Four, the school picked Greg Gard, his assistant for 23 years, to replace him.

               By contrast, Illinois has the attention span of a mosquito, flitting from coach to coach and style to style and having to start anew with each new regime. Nice-guy Lou Henson ran the hoops program from 1975 to 1996, with much success, but since he left it’s had five head basketball coaches, none with previous ties to the state or university. A couple of those, Lon Kruger (1997-2000) and Bill Self (2001-03), were certified aces whose teams fared well, but both were mercenaries who fled Champaign as soon as jobs they wanted more beckoned. Bruce Weber (2004-12) did well at first, taking a Self-recruited team to the 2005 NCAA championship game, but was fired after losing too many recruiting battles. Ohioan John Groce (2013-17) took his teams nowhere and under the incumbent, Kansan Brad Underwood, Illinois has had two straight losing seasons, something that hadn’t happened since 1974 and ’75.  Underwood says things will improve once his fast-paced style is established, but we’ve heard that before.

               The chronology in football is no better. The program also has had five head coaches since 2000, one (Ron Zook) a big-school retread (he previously coached at Florida), two smaller-school types (Tim Beckman and Bill Cubit), and two refugees from the NFL, Ron Turner and the present guy, Lovie Smith. None had previous ties to the Illini, and none could or can boast a winning record there.

Smith had been a winner with the Chicago Bears but was long out of the college game. The Illini needed a Pied Piper to resuscitate recruiting after the deplorable Beckham and interim-coach Cubit, but while Lovie might know his X’s and O’s he has the personality of a turnip.  Illinois went 3-9, 2-10 and 4-8 in his first three seasons. It’s 2-1 so far this time, but lost to Eastern Michigan the last time out, and tougher foes loom.

 If Smith doesn’t show something in conference play the school will again be in the coaching market. If it is it would be well-advised to follow Wisconsin’s example and find someone who bleeds orange and blue. It couldn’t do worse than it’s been doing.