Varsity is the free Official Digital Magazine of Wisconsin Athletics, covering Badgers football, basketball, hockey and more each week.
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Making strength of schedule a priority BEHIND THE DESK BARRY ALVAREZ • UW DIRECTOR OF ATHLETICS I really thought we had a good crowd for our football season opener; especially since it was against an FCS opponent on Labor Day weekend. Even the students were in their seats early — early for them, anyway. People were accustomed to walking in here last year and the game was over by halftime or early in the third quarter. They weren't quite used to the type of game that we had against Northern Iowa. A story was brought to my at- tention about the number of empty seats at many college stadiums over the weekend. I could see that happening on a holiday weekend if you don't have an appealing op- ponent. People are on vacation, they have choices, so they just eat the ticket. I was on a TV show last week and I was asked about schedul- ing. I said if you take a look at the whole slate of nonconference games in the Big Ten, there are not many really appealing games. It's not tough for me to say that, because it's true. It's hard for our TV partners to look at these games and get excited. That's one initiative to upgrade the schedule. We can talk all we want about television dictating times, etc. But with what they're paying us, they're allowing college programs to survive given the way the econo- my is, and the escalating costs. One way to keep the ticket prices down is for the TV contracts 16 » VARSITY SEPTEMBER 6, 2012 to go up. Somewhere along the line, we have to cooperate with them and give them more appeal- ing games. People have been complaining about the nonconference schedule, and it's not just here. That's one of the reasons why we tried to work out an arrange- ment with the Pac-12 to try and do something with them each year similar to the Big Ten/ACC Chal- lenge in basketball. When the Pac-12 backed out, our solution was to agree to strengthen our schedules. If you do it out far enough, you can go home-and-home with two BCS opponents, or two quality opponents. You flip-flop them and you end up buying two games each year. The other initiative is that if you want to be a player in the national championship — starting with the new playoff system in 2014 — one of the criteria is strength of sched- ule, so you'd better strengthen it. Saturday's game against Oregon State will be a good test for us. This is our first road game, and any time you do anything differ- ently for the first time, you get different reactions. When we used to practice at the seminary, the first time we scrim- maged in the stadium, the fresh- men would take a step backward. The first time we put pads on, it was the same thing. The first time you go on the road, if you're not a veteran team, you have the potential of guys not being able to manage the trip, and all the things that go along with it. Oregon State's Mike Riley has the reputation of being an excel- lent coach. He's had some very good teams out there and they've been able to put all their prepara- tion into our game. I don't think they worried too much about Nicholls State even before their opener was postponed.