How Barry Alvarez got rid of Dave Aranda

Follow the money. We've heard the expression hundreds of times. In fact, many of us have acted on the expression in our own lives. People go where more money and resources are. It's part of our biological human nature. For right or for wrong, money always seems to persuade people to do things. This trait is especially true for football coaches.


Wisconsin defensive coordinator Dave Aranda is leaving to assume the same position at LSU. Aranda is set to make around $1.3 million compared to the $520,000 he made at Wisconsin this past year. Anyone who immediately says they wouldn't make that move is either lying or they didn't hear the numbers correctly. The question people are asking is: Why couldn't the Badgers keep the beloved coach in Madison for at least another year? Perhaps the real question is: Why didn't our current athletic administration make more of an effort to keep Aranda around?

Moving past the money, the move makes sense for a guy like Aranda. At age 38, he's one of the better up-and-coming assistant coaches in college football. In his first year with Wisconsin in 2013, he changed a suspect Badger defense from a 4-3 scheme to a 3-4. The result: Wisconsin ranked in the top-20 in almost every defensive category. This last season under Aranda, the Badgers ranked second in total defensive yardage and were the top team in scoring defense in all of college football. We can talk about stats all day long, but the bottom line is Dave Aranda is a coveted assistant coach with potential to move to the NFL as a defensive coordinator or a college head coach, whichever he wishes to pursue. Many people believe Aranda's epitome is in the NFL as a defensive coordinator. Should he want to pursue the NFL, it will be much easier to do so from a program as large as LSU compared to Wisconsin. So for the money and the potential for career growth, Aranda made the right call in heading to LSU.

But the Badgers had the chance to keep him, and the fact that they didn't is a direct result of a University, athletic department, and athletic director once again failing to realize the potential and necessity in keeping high-profile and coveted assistant coaches in Madison. This isn't the first time we've seen successful Wisconsin assistant coaches and head coaches leave for other jobs that don't appear to be an "upgrade" over coaching for the Badgers. Former Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema left Madison for the head coaching job at Arkansas, citing the inability for Wisconsin to offer competitive pay to keep assistant coaches around. This last season, both coordinators at Arkansas made more than Aranda. Just two years ago, Gary Andersen left Wisconsin for Oregon State due to many of the same reasons. Wisconsin has lost numerous head and assistant coaches that all had concerns about pay for themselves and pay for other assistant coaches. It's not a coincidence, folks.

Barry Alvarez is the fourth-highest paid athletic director in college football with a salary of almost $1.1 million a year. Let's not pretend that we don't try and make as much money as we can in whatever we do, but it is a little disconcerting. In comparison, Aranda and Wisconsin offensive coordinator Andy Ludwig ranked second to last in the Big Ten in total salary. Wisconsin offensive line coach Joe Rudolph made almost $40,000 more than Aranda this last year. To add to the money equation, Wisconsin ranked 8th in the entire country in total revenue last year at $127,910,918 right behind Big Ten powerhouses Michigan and Ohio State. To recap, Barry Alvarez makes more than 231 out of 235 NCAA Division 1 athletic directors, Wisconsin produced more revenue than 227 of those 235 schools, and Wisconsin assistant coaches make less than those at 11 out of 12 Big Ten Schools. It doesn't take a mathemitican to realize that something doesn't add up here. 

The worst part of the whole story is that Dave Aranda wanted to stay in Madison. Go back to last summer and he was quoted saying, “Family, number one, it was best to stay. My wife loves it here, my kids love their teachers, they like their schools, they’re in love with the neighborhood we’re at.” It was also reported that Aranda turned down offers of over $1 million a year from Miami and Virginia Tech to stay at Wisconsin. But Wisconsin failed to come up with even a few thousand dollars to give Aranda a raise and when LSU offered him the $1.4 million, it was an offer that Aranda understandably couldn't turn down. 

So, who's to blame for all of this mess? The easy answer is Barry Alvarez. Moving past the big ego of an athletic director, you can then look at the University of Wisconsin and its board of regents for some of the blame. Just a couple years ago, the University "found" what was reported to be about $1 billion in a fund that was unaccounted for. This came in unison with a continuous annual tuition increase. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was so upset about this that he froze tuition. So, what did UW do with all of this money they found? The first thing they did was spend nearly $100 million on upgrades to Camp Randall Stadium with new locker rooms and a student-athlete performance center. They also built a new golf complex as well as renovations to the basketball and hockey locker rooms in the Kohl Center. UW also won $234 million in a lawsuit against Apple when Apple used some software created in Madison. Now, I'm not saying that the athletic facilities shouldn't have been upgraded. Many of the facilities, football included, were very outdated and lagged far behind the rest of the Big Ten. But you can't tell me that a University that has a $1 billion surplus that they don't tell anyone about can't afford to give Dave Aranda a few hundred thousand dollar pay raise to keep him around.

The morale of the story is this: Wisconsin will fail to keep top-notch coaches and assistants around the football program as long as Barry Alvarez is athletic director. Football coaches are human beings first, and just like the rest of us, they're going to follow the money in almost every circumstance. I understand the issue is bigger than Alvarez having and ego and not wanting someone to steal his thunder. But for someone like Barry who is a legend and icon at the University of Wisconsin and in college football across the nation, he has more than enough pull to be able to get more money into the football program to be able to pay coaches. Wisconsin football is certainly not a stepping stone in terms of quality of play and all other measure of overall success. But it's becoming a stepping stone for coaches that head to places they'll get paid more. And until our athletic director and University administration realizes that and admits that, Wisconsin football will never take off to that next level it's capable of going to.

Farewell to Bo

So, here we are. It's a rainy Monday July 6th in Madison. After a beautiful weekend, we've gone back to the rain-filled usual Monday.  Everything is normal. Some people have different definitions of normal. Merriam-Webster defines normal as usual or ordinary. As a Wisconsin basketball fan, I've become accustomed to "normal." Over the past 14 years, things have been normal in regards to the Wisconsin basketball program. Much of that is thanks to William Francis Ryan Jr., more commonly known around here as Bo. As many of you know, Bo announced a week ago that he will retire after this next season. It sent a shock throughout Madison and Wisconsin as a whole. That's because Bo established what was "normal" for Wisconsin basketball. I could go on-and-on about stats on what he's accomplished. 357 wins, 14 straight NCAA appearances, two straight final fours, but that's not what Bo was about. He was about tradition, and staying the course. Under Bo Ryan, we as Badger fans knew what we were getting each year and each game from the teams he coached. Sure, he had some teams that were better than others. But the philosophy never changed. They were going to play good defense, rebound, and run an ultra-efficient offense centered around taking care of this basketball. This was the norm over the last 15 years. 

My grandparents graduated from UW-Madison and had season tickets to badger basketball as long as I can remember. I don't remember a game without Bo Ryan at the helm. The way the Badgers played under Bo gave me a sense of pride because I knew that we were going to play the right way with solid defense and without the sloppy turnovers that had seemed to plague college basketball over the last decade. It wasn't flashy but I knew we had a chance to beat anyone on any given night. I remember going to the Kohl Center when we beat number two-ranked Pittsburgh in crushing fashion highlighted by an Alando Tucker alley-oop in the closing moments. I remember going to the Kohl center when we knocked off number-one Ohio State when Jordan Taylor forgot who he was and turned into Michael Jordan in the 2nd half of the game. Students stormed the court and the party was underway. A similar mobbing of students happened a couple years later when we beat one of college basketball's "most hated" poster-boys in Kyle Singler and Duke. These sorts of victories have become the norm for Wisconsin basketball. Under, Bo the Badgers were all about consistency. As a fan I never expected too much or too little. The team was never going to be great, but we were always going to be in the top part of the Big Ten. This was fine for a program that struggled to find consistency, making the NCAA tournament just seven times before Bo showed up. 

I remember making a bet with my roommate my freshman year of college in 2011-2012. It was about who was going to be the next head basketball coach here at Wisconsin once Bo decided to hang it up. I got Tony Bennett and Shaka Smart (along with Tom Thibideau and Phil Jackson for comedic effect) and he got the field. FYI this bet just got real with Bo pushing Gard into the spotlight. This bet came about because we were both (mostly me) were getting frustrated with the Badgers' offense under Bo. The philosophy of swinging the ball and getting low post touches was gone. The team had turned into a compilation of players competing on who could shoot the most three pointers. This frustration boiled over when we lost to another one of college basketball's most hated players, Marshall Henderson and 12-seeded Ole Miss in the first round of the 2013 NCAA tournament. I was done with Bo. The efficient, methodical offense that he coined with Mike Wilkinson and Kirk Penny was gone, Bo looked old, and the program appeared to be on the down-swing. 

But then something happened. I can't put a finger on exactly what it is, but the team changed starting in the fall of 2013. It's like Bo was rejuvenated all of the sudden. The team started off the season on a double-digit win streak which concluded with their first trip to the final four in almost 15 years. They went back to the old style of playing inside out, dominating teams on defense and the boards, and rarely turning the ball over. I'm not sure what got into Bo, but he changed. Maybe it was the arrival of Frank Kaminsky onto the scene as a full time starter. Maybe it was freshmen Nigel Hayes and Bronson Koenig stepping up in key roles. Maybe it was the hiring of former NBA strength coach Erik Helland and the impact he had on the team. Most likely, it was a combination of all three of those things. But the main reason for the turnaround of the program was, once again, William Francis Ryan Jr. For the first time in his coaching career at Wisconsin, Bo adapted for the right reasons. The team's strength was their inside game with outside shooting to supplement. Bo went away from his trend of the "bombs away" offensive strategy and went back to pounding it inside to Frank and Nigel until teams sucked in, where they would kick it out to the shooters. It was the modern day basketball philosophy and Bo worked it to perfection. 

All of the sudden, our bet was less meaningful. We didn't want Bo to leave, especially after the team made the final four again this last year. Wisconsin Basketball had reached heights it had never been to before, thanks to Bo. The old saying goes "All good things must come to an end." Yes, Bo is prepping for his farewell tour whether he'll acknowledge it or not. The team doesn't have the talent it had the last two years, and will probably have a tough time making the Final Four a third year in a row. It wouldn't be normal for a "3-peat" by any stretch of the imagination. However, these doubts I have about this next year are similar to the ones I had of Bo and the direction of the program just three years ago. But one thing I've learned the last two years is never count out William Francis Ryan Jr. Bo is anything but normal.