Varsity is the free Official Digital Magazine of Wisconsin Athletics, covering Badgers football, basketball, hockey and more each week.
Issue link: http://catalog.e-digitaleditions.com/i/165384
I BEHIND THE DESK BY BARRY ALVAREZ // UW DIRECTOR OF ATHLETICS We're working to get it right for UW fans 14 sent out an e-mail following the UMass game acknowledging that we knew there was an issue with the concessions operation and we were going to address it and get it straight. My thinking hasn't changed since Saturday. It was the first time out with our new concessions provider. There were issues, but we're going to work it out. All in all, we'll get it fixed. I thought the video board was spectacular. I know people like stats on the scoreboard, and we are working on giving stats and out-oftown scores a greater presence in the stadium. As our sound guys get to know the speakers and the new sound system better in Camp Randall, we will continue to improve in that area, too. I really liked what I saw on the field Saturday. I thought defensively we were really clean. I saw no missed gap assignments and we contained everything. I know we didn't sack their quarterback. But we knocked him down or pressured him and he was getting rid of the ball very quickly. They didn't want him sacked. A lot of times their receivers weren't out of their cuts and the ball was thrown early. Just because you don't have sacks, it doesn't mean that you're not harassing the quarterback. You don't want to let him get into a rhythm throwing the ball and we have a lot of things we can do with our blitz package that can create // VARSITY September 5, 2013 some problems for an offense. Overall, we played a solid game. I thought the O-line covered people up and I was impressed with our tailbacks. Yet, there's a lot of teaching and a lot of things you can correct and improve on. If you have a lot of mental errors in a game like this, you have problems. We didn't. As long as you're doing things well, you're doing them fast and you're doing them correctly, you'll have a chance. It was impressive that seven FCS teams had wins the first week. That will scare you now. We saw Michigan get beat by App State and we were nearly beaten by Cal Poly. You've got very good athletes playing at that level. Some of these FCS teams may not have as much depth, but their skill players are often as good as anybody you'll see during the season. As most people know, as of 2016 in the Big Ten, we're not to add any FCS opponents. I think our league has to do that. If we want to be a player in the national championship picture, we have to improve our non-conference schedule. Quite frankly, our non-conference schedules have been poor, and we're part of it. If we want to improve our league, we have to improve our schedule and we've got to win some of those games. I was happy to announce last Friday the addition of Bruce Van De Velde as a senior associate athletic director. He has a well-rounded background and he brings a lot of experience with him. I've known Bruce for a long time. He was worked with a lot of guys I've worked with so I know about his work ethic, and how thorough he is. He started with Hayden Fry as a recruiting coordinator at Iowa and, along the way, he was in charge of football operations for Bill Snyder at Kansas State. He was also a fundraiser at Missouri and Oklahoma and an athletic director at Utah State and Iowa State, where he worked with my old defensive coordinator, Dan McCarney. Most recently, he was the athletic director at Louisiana Tech. Bruce has a wealth of knowledge and he's a very good fundraiser. We'll let him work with the people in Bascom, he'll be my liaison on campus and he'll oversee football. We're putting a lot on his plate, but he can handle it.