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Rose Bowl winners have toughness in common BEHIND THE DESK BY BARRY ALVAREZ • UW DIRECTOR OF ATHLETICS I was delighted to hear that one of our Badger quarterbacks — Brooks Bollinger — is joining the profession as the head coach at Hill-Murray High School. What’s the best advice I could give Brooks? Go with your heart. Brooks knows coaching. He’s been around a lot of different coaches in the pros and he has evaluated them. He knows good coaches and bad coaches. He knows what works and what doesn’t. He’s always been outspoken, too. If Brooks didn’t agree with a coach — whether it was how you were practicing or how you were calling plays — he was quick to make suggestions. Brooks Bollinger was a coach on the field. He was born in the huddle. He’s very emotional and smart. He has a great personality; the kids will like him and follow him. He’s a natural leader. I loved his type of quarterback: he was a runner and passer. I re- member the first time we put him in a game in ’99 against Michigan and he made plays that really opened my eyes. They blitzed him one time and the linebacker hit him square in the mouth. But he knew where the throw was going and hit the out-cut on a 12-yard pass that kept the chains moving. The next week, without anyone knowing, we started him at Ohio State and he lit it up. Someone once asked me if there were common traits be- tween our Rose Bowl quarter- backs. Darrell Bevell, Mike Samuel and Brooks Bollinger were all scrutinized and criticized at various times. But they were all tough competitors; tough-minded football players. Before the start of two-a-days, we always had the players answer some questions. One of them was, “If you had to walk down a dark alley, which guy on this team would you take with you?’’ I’ll never forget that a majority of the guys on the ’98 team picked Sammy. That they would pick a 210-pound quarterback over big offensive linemen, strapping defensive linemen and tough Darrell Bevell, who recently joined the staff of the Seattle Seahawaks, is one of three former Badger QBs that won the Rose Bowl and have gone on to careers in coach- ing. linebackers spoke volumes. He competed and he made the other guys around him compete. It’s funny, of the three -- Bevell, Samuel and Bollinger -- I didn’t see Sammy as a coach. I knew he could be a coach and I could see why he would be a good coach. But I didn’t envision him as a coach. There was no doubt that Dar- rell was going to be a coach; no question that he was going in that direction because he knew the game so well. Bev was a gym rat just like Brooks. It’s gratifying to me that all three are coaching today: Darrell is in the NFL with the Seahawks, Sammy is coaching quarterbacks at a high school in Philly and Brooks is a head coach in St. Paul. I really enjoyed coaching each one of them. And I’m proud they wanted to be coaches because I know what kind of people they are. They’re good for the profes- sion.