On Wisconsin, to Rose Bowl at Long Last : College football: Badgers beat Michigan State, 41-20, to break 31-year drought and earn trip to Pasadena to play UCLA.

Eight presidents have lived in the White House since the last time it happened.

Gasoline has gone up $1 a gallon, movies $5 a seat.

Some of the players in Wisconsin’s last Rose Bowl game can take their grandchildren to see the Badgers’ next, on Jan. 1 in Pasadena. That’s how long it has been.

The Badgers ended a 31-year drought by beating Michigan State, 41-20, today in Tokyo to earn the Big Ten’s berth in the Rose Bowl and a game against UCLA. The victory gave Wisconsin (9-1-1) a tie with Ohio State for the league championship, and the Badgers get the bid because they have have had the longer absence from Pasadena, last playing in 1963.

Ohio State’s last Rose Bowl game was in 1985.

Wisconsin fell behind, 7-3, to Michigan State, 6-5 and headed to the Liberty Bowl, before touchdown runs of one and 41 yards by Terrell Fletcher and a three-yard scoring run by Brent Moss, all in the second quarter, made it 24-7.

Moss added a second-half touchdown.

Fletcher’s first touchdown generated a 10-7 lead and a minute later, Keith Jackson returned a Michigan State punt 35 yards to the Spartan 41. Fletcher’s second touchdown came on the next play for a 17-7 lead.

Moss’ touchdown capped a 99-yard, eight-play drive that ended with 1:20 to play in the second quarter.

Steve Holman’s one-yard touchdown brought the Spartans back to within 27-17, but Wisconsin drove 82 yards, the final seven on a Darrell Bevell-to-Lee DeRamus pass for a 34-17 edge.

Moss ran for 152 yards in his 10th consecutive game with 100 or more yards. Fletcher added 113 yards for a team whose coach, Barry Alvarez, was among the doubters when the season began.

“I didn’t think we were ready to contend for the championship of this league,” he said while drying himself from a Gatorade shower from a team that proved him wrong. “We wanted to win this one for the state of Wisconsin and our alumni.”

Both could be called long-suffering.

Michigan State had beaten Wisconsin eight times in a row, but this was a Badger team playing for something more than the end of another disappointing season. Wisconsin had not won eight games since its last Rose Bowl season, 1962, and had nine victories only four times, the last in 1901, when the Badgers defeated Hyde Park (Ill.) High and Milwaukee Medical.

They were put in the position of being able to win a Rose Bowl berth at Tokyo when they tied Ohio State, 14-14, on Nov. 6 and then the Buckeyes lost, 28-0, to Michigan in their season finale on Nov. 20.

Wisconsin’s victory sends Ohio State to the Holiday Bowl, where it faces Western Athletic Conference champion Brigham Young on Dec. 30.

UCLA last played Wisconsin in 1982, winning, 51-26, at Madison. The Bruins are 7-1 against Wisconsin, 4-0 under Coach Terry Donahue.

“It really didn’t matter who we played in the Rose Bowl,” said Donahue, still basking in the 27-21 victory over USC that got the Bruins to Pasadena for Jan. 1. “We either were playing a No. 10 team (Wisconsin) or No. 11 team. Both are good teams.”

Donahue said he has met Alvarez only once, but the relationship between Donahue and Ohio State Coach John Cooper is long-lasting. The two met in 1965 when Donahue was an undersized defensive tackle at UCLA and Cooper was an assistant coach.

Donahue had said that Ohio State was his sentimental favorite.

Wisconsin scotched that in Tokyo. Favored to win over a Michigan State team that had lost to Penn State, 38-37, the week before, Wisconsin officials talked with Ken Norris, UCLA’s video coordinator, Friday about an exchange of game tapes today.

Al Fish, an administrative officer in Wisconsin’s athletic department, spent Wednesday in Southern California, making Rose Bowl plans for the Badgers, who should have no trouble selling their ticket allotment and then some after a 31-year absence from Pasadena.

“You’re not going to believe the red shirts in the stands at the Rose Bowl,” Fish said. “It’s going to be packed with red.”

That will contrast nicely with UCLA’s blue for television.

The Rose Bowl berth was another in a long line of successes for Alvarez this season, his fourth as the Badger coach.

“We’ve been going along, checking off goals as we went,” he said. “Now there is one goal left: winning on Jan. 1. It’s not enough just to get there. We want to win.”