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Plenty to talk about in New York this year BEHIND THE DESK BARRY ALVAREZ • UW DIRECTOR OF ATHLETICS I 've always enjoyed attending the National Football Founda- tion awards dinner in New York City. Last year was especially mean- ingful for obvious reasons. I felt privileged to be a member of the 2010 induction class for the College Football Hall of Fame. In general, though, I just like coming here for this event. For starters, it's good for our profession to rub shoulders with a lot of people. You get a chance to make numerous contacts over the two or three days in New York. I will visit with coaches and ath- letic directors from other confer- ences. In fact, I've actually sched- uled some games while I've been here in the past. Mostly, you're reacquainting yourself with people who are in the same business that you are. Lately, I almost feel like I'm a clearinghouse because my phone has been ringing off the hook. I've got people calling me look- ing for jobs. They might want me to talk to an AD or a head coach. I've even had some headhunters calling me to ask me about differ- ent coaches. There are a lot of openings today in college football, and a lot of things going on. There are just a lot of good coaches and good staffs on the market. There will be a lot of formal and informal interviewing taking place in the hotel. The awards dinner was Tuesday 10 » VARSITY DECEMBER 8, 2011 night. I had Big Ten meetings here Wednesday. I've run into a lot of people who are excited about the Badgers and the season we've had. That's especially true coming off our win over Michigan State in the Big Ten championship game. The league had to be pleased with the type of game that was I've run into a lot of people who are excited about the Badgers and the season we've had. I was really proud of our guys. played last Saturday night. I really thought Michigan State was ready to play. So were we. I thought they gave us their best shot and we answered it. It was like a couple of heavyweights trading punches in the middle of the ring. I was really proud of our guys. As you might expect, I'm re- ally excited to get back to the Rose Bowl. I'm excited because it's an opportunity to put a stamp on this team and our program. It's also exciting to play a quality team like Oregon. Nobody runs an offense with as much speed as they do. The good thing is that we'll have a chance to put some time in and study their offense. I really think it would be a hard preparation in one week or from one Saturday to the next. Having some extra time should be a benefit. For one thing, you can talk to people and see what others have done against them. You want to see how they've compensated for Oregon's speed and how they've subbed. It seems like you might be better off putting a defense on the field and staying with it. That would avoid some personnel substitution problems that Oregon can cause. I see this as being one of the more entertaining and competitive games in the BCS rotation. To be honest, I don't like the LSU-Alabama rematch. I understand what people are saying about them being the two best teams this season. I hear their argument for playing the sequel — Oklahoma State's loss was worse than Alabama's. All that being said, Alabama had a chance to beat LSU on its home field and couldn't do it. I know it was a heckuva game. But I'm not excited about seeing that game again. I would have been more excited to see Oklahoma State play LSU. One way or another, this will definitely add to the discussion of the plus-one model. If you added OK State and Stan- ford to the mix, you'd be closer to crowning a true champion. At least this year.