Just saw that the AD search committee has Chris Ballard and Michael Finley on it, and I got to thinking about something that has been eating at me for years now. You want to know what I miss most about Wisconsin football? The option. Not the fancy option, not the veer and shoot nonsense. I am talking about the fullback trap, the power sweep, the basic belly option where our quarterback would put the ball in the gut and read the defensive end. That was football. That was Wisconsin football.
I think back to the 1993 season when we went to the Rose Bowl and beat UCLA 21-16. We did not have a quarterback throwing for 350 yards. We had guys who could run the option and a fullback who would knock a linebacker into next week. Barry built this program on the idea that you could line up and tell the defense exactly what you were gonna do and they still could not stop you. That is the beauty of option football. It is not about tricking anybody. It is about being tougher than the man across from you.
Now look at us. We are running some spread attack with quarterbacks who look like they have never taken a snap under center in their lives. I watch these kids toss the ball around the yard and I think about Ron Dayne running behind a pulling guard and just punishing defenders. The option game was about discipline. It was about timing. It was about knowing that if you did your job, the play would work. There was no freelancing, no hero ball nonsense.
Coach Alvarez understood that in the Big Ten, you win in November by running the football. You do not win in November by throwing 40 passes in a snowstorm. You win by lining up in the power I and telling the defense to come stop you. And when they could not, you ran it again. And again. And again until they quit. That is what made the 1998 Rose Bowl team special. That is what made the 1999 team special. That is what made us Wisconsin.
I see these offenses now with quarterbacks running around like chickens with their heads cut off and it just does not look like real football to me. It looks like video game football. The option required precision. It required a quarterback who could read a defensive end in half a second. It required a fullback who could lead through the hole and a tailback who could make one cut and go. We had that. We had something beautiful.
I am not saying we need to go full wishbone or run the triple option every down. But I am saying that somewhere along the way, we lost our identity. We started trying to be Ohio State or Oregon instead of being Wisconsin. And that is a shame because when I think about the greatest moments in Badgers history, I think about the option. I think about the power sweep. I think about the fullabck trap. I think about football the way it was meant to be played.
Ballard and Finley are good men but they need to find an AD who understands that Wisconsin football is not about flash. It is about substance. It is about running the football and stopping the run. It...