GrendonJennings wrote:I think there is a bit of a romanticized view of Barry. That guy had a ton of tactical errors and got his ass handed to him several times.
I'm not saying that I would agree with somebody that puts BB in the as good or better category as Alvarez literally rebuilt the program and BB was handed the keys to something pretty good, but I do think that Alvarez's ability to coach is a bit overrated. I can't give you specific examples but I specifically recall a lot of games where I was throwing things at the TV because of how he called games.
Obviously, the one stat that really matters to most is 3-0 vs. 0-2 in the Rose Bowls, but I also think that last year's Oregon squad was about 5x better than any of the teams Alvarez beat, though 1998 UCLA was pretty good.
Barry built the team but I recall A LOT of Barry's teams underachieving and getting ass-hammered by top 10 Michigan/OSU/PSU types.
There were several years in the early 2000s where we didn't have a winning record in conference. It all comes down to their ability to get a competent QB with some seniority in or have some sort of epic running/defensive presence for them to have success. I think both sucked tactically on the whole.
Of all three Rose Bowl wins, to this day i still have a hard time believing the Badgers actually got to and then won a Rose Bowl with Mike Samuel at quarterback. He was a terrible passer overall and i remember being blown away how often our option plays worked that year for huge first downs. What blew me away was i remember that Samuel almost never pitched the ball on the option calls, yet defenders kept also playing the running back. How did the defenders not catch on that Samuel kept the ball nearly every time the option was run?
As for Barry losing to the better teams, my memory was that he actually was pretty good against the good teams. Instead, it was to many bad losses to teams like Minnesota, Indiana, Northwestern, Illinois, etc that hurt him most. There were also some ugly non-conference losses like being destroyed twice by Colorado, that year UNLV whipped us at home, and a terrible Cincinnati team the year Wisconsin easily could have finished undefeated.
