STATE OF THE PROGRAM: FOOTBALL
“The awareness and level of media attention we’ve gotten since last year has been overwhelming. But we have to make sure we keep everything on an even keel.”
“Obviously, we’re not talking about someone who was born in Wisconsin; a resident. We’re talking about a kid who likes to play football and doesn’t really care about the sexiness of the program.
“He cares about hard work and dedication – all the things that we kind of embody here at Wisconsin – and we try to sell that.
“If a kid doesn’t like that, I don’t want him. They either gravitate to it, or leave it alone. That’s the part I’ve really tried to stress and our coaches have done a great job.
“Every year we’ve gotten bet- ter about the type of kids we have; about the type of char- acter and about the ability to coach those kids when they get here. Hopefully we can keep
moving forward.”
What the Badgers won’t be able to do anymore is move under the radar.
“It’s great to have the ex- posure and the attention,” Bielema admitted during Sun- day’s Media Day at Camp Ran- dall Stadium. “It’s better to be on someone’s radar than off it. “It puts us at the forefront not only in our conference but across the country, from coast to coast.
“The awareness and level of media attention we’ve gotten since last year has been over- whelming.
“But we have to make sure we keep everything on an even- keel.”
That should be a given with the team’s 1-0 mentality. Bielema, nonetheless, found
some literary inspiration from Jim Collins’ highly-acclaimed book, “Good to Great: Why some companies make the leap … and others don’t.”
A friend recommended it and Bielema couldn’t put it down. “The main emphasis,” Bielema said, “was that a lot of people settle for being good; and just get complacent and accept being at a level that is better than everybody else. “But to get to an elite status, to get to a great level, you have to continue to research within yourself what you can do better and not change wholesale what you’re doing.
“It was a new way for me to kind of think about it … maybe we’re at a pretty good level right now but where can we go from here?”
