Barry Alvarez

Barry Alvarez (born December 30, 1946) is a former American football player and coach and currently the Director of Athletics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He served as the head football coach at Wisconsin for 16 seasons from 1990 to 2005, compiling a career college football record of 118–73–4. He has the longest head coaching tenure and the most wins in Wisconsin Badgers football history. Alvarez stepped down as head coach after the 2005 season, remaining as athletic director. Alvarez was inducted to the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 2010.

Early life

Barry Alvarez is a graduate of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, where he played linebacker in the 1960s under Bob Devaney, who became one of his major coaching influences along with Hayden Fry and Lou Holtz. He later became a head coach at Lexington, Nebraska High School and then Mason City High School in Iowa where the Mohawks won the 1978 class 4A state title, 15–13, over Dubuque Hempstead before becoming an assistant coach at University of Iowa and then at the University of Notre Dame.

Head coaching career

In 1990, Alvarez was named head coach of the Wisconsin Badgers. He inherited a program that had not had a winning season since 1984, and had only won seven games in Big Ten play in that time.

After three less-than-distinguished seasons rebuilding the awful program he had inherited, including a 1–10 record in his first year, the Badgers...
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