Wisconsin Milks the Rose Bowl for All It’s Worth : College football: Terry Donahue discusses the game with counterpart Barry Alvarez, who expects Badgers to benefit with better recruits. Bruins excited, too.

If somebody had approached him in August, when he was in retreat in a cabin on Lake Wisconsin, and offered a bid to the Sunshine Classic. . . .

. . . “I’m gone,” Barry Alvarez said. “I’m there.”

Four months and 11 games later, his sights had been raised, and Thursday in Pasadena, Alvarez was answering questions as Wisconsin’s coach in the 80th Rose Bowl alongside his UCLA counterpart, Terry Donahue.

It was a long time coming.

“As my wife said when we qualified to come here, you can imagine how many times we’ve heard how many people had a chance 30 years ago to come out here (the last time the Badgers played in the Rose Bowl, in 1963),” Alvarez said. “They passed up that opportunity, figuring the next time they’d come, hoping it would be the next year or the year after that. And how many people told us, before they died, they wanted to come back to the Rose Bowl. And it’s getting real close for some of them.”

It’s the third trip to Pasadena for Alvarez, who was an assistant with Iowa teams that played in the 1982 and ’86 games, both losses, the latter to Donahue and UCLA.

It’s his first bowl as a head coach, in his fourth season at Wisconsin, and only the seventh bowl of any kind for the Badgers in 105 years of football.

Surprise?

No, shock.

“The Rose Bowl was never one of our goals,” Alvarez said. “We talked about that at the start of the season, and quite frankly, I didn’t know whether we were ready to contend for a conference championship. We started the season with a goal to be in the top four, because we had bowl games locked up with the conference (for at least four teams). I was wrong.”

The Rose Bowl was always one of UCLA’s goals, but the Bruins’ presence in Pasadena on New Year’s Day is almost as big a surprise. They were picked to finish anywhere from fourth to eighth in the Pacific 10, then seemed to justify that by losing their first two games. Seven consecutive victories and eight in nine games put them in the game.

It’s an event they are approaching like tourists, even though they play their home games in the Rose Bowl stadium.

“We haven’t been here in eight years, so it’s obviously not a home game for us,” said Donahue, who is 5-0 in Rose Bowls as a player, assistant and coach at UCLA. “We’re strangers. It’s an exciting time for all of us. I think our players will be every bit as eager to do all of the things surrounding the bowl game as Wisconsin’s.”

He learned that quickly, in a team meeting this week, when a straw poll proved that every Bruin was eager to go to Disneyland as part of the bowl game buildup.

“For us, it’s a new experience,” Donahue said. “There isn’t a player on our squad who’s played in the Rose Bowl game, and the fact that the Rose Bowl is our home stadium and we’re familiar with the surroundings, well, we’re not familiar with the Rose Bowl game.”

The coaches know little about one another, having met only once before this week. And they know little about their opposition.

Ninth-ranked Wisconsin (9-1-1) won the Big Ten bid by beating Michigan State in Tokyo last Sunday, 41-20. Donahue has been in New York this week and has not had time to watch film of the Badgers.

“I had an opportunity to watch the second half of their game in Tokyo and was impressed,” he said. “Wisconsin is a very physical team, especially in the offensive line. They rush the ball 250 yards a game and have a very complete running game.”

Chief among Badger runners is Brent Moss, who has 1,479 yards and is on a streak of 10 games with 100 or more yards rushing. Moss is from Racine, Wis., and the sort of player who used to get away.

“One of the things I said when we got here was that we wanted to build a wall around Wisconsin and keep those players at home,” Alvarez said. “When I got here, eight players on Iowa’s two-deep chart were from Wisconsin.”

Moss shares tailback time with Terrell Fletcher, who rushed for 932 yards. Moss starts, plays two series, then Fletcher comes in for two and the player who has the most early success gets the lion’s share of the carries the rest of the game.

Alvarez came back from Tokyo, spent a day in Madison and headed for California to scout practice sites, with Occidental and Orange Coast College being the choices.

He has seen some film on 14th-ranked UCLA and his eyes were quickly opened by J.J. Stokes, the Bruins’ All-American receiver.

“He’s hard to miss,” Alvarez said. “You know, great players jump off the screen at you. He’s as fine a receiver as there is. . . . He’s very impressive.”

He’s the kind of player Alvarez is trying to woo to Madison.

“I’ve got 15 recruits coming in Saturday,” he said. “This game is helping us get in a door or two, including some doors in California.”

They are doors Wisconsin has been knocking on for years. Now, after 31 years, they apparently are opening.