GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Longtime Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez is retiring this summer, after 31 years with the Badgers.
Alvarez served as the school’s football coach from 1990 to 2005. He led the team to three Big Ten championships, and three Rose Bowl victories.
In 2004, Alvarez took over as the head of the athletic department.
During his tenure, Wisconsin teams won 16 team national titles and 74 conference championships.
Alvarez will be stepping away from his duties in June.
“I just think it’s time,” Alvarez told reporters at a press conference Tuesday. “I’m 74 years old, I’ve had a good run…it’s just time to pass the baton.”
After a three-decade run, one could say seeing Barry Alvarez retire is like watching the end of an era.
“He’s one of the main people that I’ve ever met and been around that he commands a room,” said former Badger football player Mike Verstegen. “You know exactly, when he’s in a room, and I haven’t met very many people like that.”
Radio host and former Badger basketball player Brian Butch also spoke about Alvarez’s “larger than life” presence.
“Him walking across the field, giving that big famous strut that he has, and you kinda knew you were meeting greatness,” he said.
Alvarez said Tuesday he would be retiring on June 30. But for many who know him, it came as little surprise.
“I kinda knew, just being involved in the program, that he was about to retire within the next couple years – he’s got a grandson on the team, and kinda the talks was his last year was going to be his grandson’s last year, so I knew that it was coming,” said Verstegen.
Butch says, “I kinda thought it was coming.”
Alvarez is credited for nearly single-handedly transforming the university’s football team, and for later guiding the Badgers to their greatest all-around sports success in school history.
“Yes, he got the football rolling, but then the basketball team needed to get rolling, and the volleyball team needed to get rolling, and the hockey team needed to get rolling, and that’s what coach did,” said Butch. “Then when took over as AD, the job that he’s done has been fantastic.
Alvarez arrived at Wisconsin in 1990 as football coach and turned one of the Big Ten’s weakest programs into one of its strongest.
“He demanded excellence of you every single day, and he demands a lot of himself too,” Verstegen said.
It’s his legacy, though, that his former players will remember most.
“It’s about winning, but it’s also about leaving it better,” Butch said. “You know, when we walk away, everyone will know who Barry Alvarez is, because he left an athletic department better than when he got there.”
