Varsity - The Official Digital Magazine of Wisconsin Athletics

Preparing for Rose Bowl no easy task BEHIND THE DESK BARRY ALVAREZ • UW DIRECTOR OF ATHLETICS D uring our on-campus bowl prep for the Rose Bowl, I watched some film on Oregon. As a longtime defensive coordi- nator, I've never seen that type of tempo before on offense. My last year as a head coach, we played a spread team in Bowling Green. They were a no-huddle of- fense and they had three different tempos. So, every once in awhile, you'd get their fast tempo. Oregon is running a two-minute drill all the time. You can see the problems they pose for the umpire. When the ball is snapped, he's usually in a back-pedal. Sometimes he gets in the way of the middle linebacker. I don't know how he can ever call anything because he's always in motion. Oregon doesn't run many plays; maybe five or six, but when you watch their game film, you see the defense not getting lined up. You see guys with their heads turned and guys not covering down. They may have three receiv- ers and only two guys covering. You may be better off playing one defense and just lining up and playing. That's really the key against Oregon: getting lined up. If the ball goes out of bounds, their center is sprinting to the hash mark, so you'd better get back to the line of scrimmage. The important thing is not to try to outsmart anybody. You have to make sure that you're sound and 12 » VARSITY DECEMBER 29, 2011 ready to play on the snap. You can't have a lot of defensive calls against them. Obviously, it's a different chal- lenge. But the thing that helps us is our preparation time. It would be really hard during the season to get ready for them in three days, but we're going to have about a month to prepare for them. It's not a one-sided deal on offense, even though we have contrasting styles. The Ducks are scratching their heads about what we do as much as we are about their tempo. As a team, I don't think we were our sharpest in last year's Rose Bowl against TCU. Some of our better players didn't play their best. They weren't as sharp as they normally are. You have to go out there to win the game. That has to be your focus. Your seniors have to be more worried about the outcome than agents and playing in the NFL. The young guys can't afford to be wide-eyed, either, when they get to Pasadena. All in all, this should be a fun matchup with Oregon. You know they're sitting there trying to figure out how they're going to stop us, too. It's not a one- sided deal on offense, even though we have very contrasting styles. They're scratching their heads about what we do as much as we are about their tempo. How do we simulate their offense in practice? That's the beauty of this match- up; a traditional Pac-12 and Big Ten matchup. I just really look forward to go- ing back to the Rose Bowl. It's such a special venue. I've been asked often about what I remember most about our back- to-back wins in Pasadena. I remember having more than 50 days to prepare for Stanford and how flat we were in 2000. I didn't want to scrimmage during the practices because I thought we were the better team. We really came out sluggish in that first half and we trailed, 9-3. I was so upset that I went straight to the kids in the locker room. Normally, I met first with the coaches. There was a plastic garbage can in the room and I started hitting it with my cane. It sounded like a bomb was going off in there. I wanted to get everyone's attention. I felt like I had to snap them out of their trance. We were going through the motions. In the second half, we were a different team. When it's all said and done, you just want to make sure you're the winning team. That never changes from genera- tion to generation.

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