Just saw the Big Ten dropped that $1.37 billion distribution number and all I can think about is what we used to do with a fraction of that money. I remember sitting in Camp Randall in 1993 watching us grind out a 14-10 win over Michigan on a cold November afternoon. No NIL deals, no transfer portal, no billion-dollar TV contracts. Just twenty-two kids who grew up wanting to play for Wisconsin and a coaching staff that built something from nnothing.
You look at what Barry Alvarez did with a shoestring budget compared to what these programs are swimming in now and it makes you wonder what we have actually gained. We won three Rose Bowls in that stretch from 1993 to 1999 and I guarantee you the entire athletic department budget back then was less than what some of these schools are paying a single quarterback today. Ron Dayne won the Heisman Trophy running behind an offensive line made up of kids from Wisconsin high schools who stayed home because they wanted to be Badgers. Not because of some revenue-sharing model or NIL collective.
Now we have $76 million per school and we are playing Notre Dame on a Monday night in September because the TV networks own the schedule. I remember when the Notre Dame game meant something because it was rare. We played them in 1964 and then did not see them again until 1994 in the Copper Bowl. That game meant everything because we earned that matchup. Now we are playing them on a random weeknight because Fox or NBC or whoever wrote a check and decided our traditions do not matter.
The money is nice for the athletic department I suppose. But you cannot tell me this sport is better off when we have Oklahoma State bringing in 50 transfers and Colorado grabbing 43 guys and calling it a rebuild. Barry Alvarez built a Rose Bowl champion with high school kids from the Midwest who actually wanted to be Badgers. We did not need to go shopping in the portal every spring to find a quarterback or a running back. We developed our own players and they stayed for four years and they graduated and they came back to the program as alumni.
I miss the old bowl tie-ins too. Remember when the Big Ten champion went to the Rose Bowl and that was it? No playoff committee, no 12-team field, no arguments about whether we deserved a spot. You won the conference and you went to Pasadena on New Year's Day and you played the Pac-10 champion and that was the best game of the year. Now we have bowl games sponsored by cheesy pickup trucks and some of them are played on Tuesday afternoons in December.
I will take the 1994 Rose Bowl over any of this modern nonsense. We beat UCLA 21-16 and the whole state of Wisconsin shut down to watch it. You did not need a billion-dollar TV contract to make that game matter. You just needed twenty-two kids who cared about the name on the front of the jersey more than the name on the back. That is what I miss. That is what this money will never buy back.