Finally, Alvarez Has Found a Home

Yes, there were some attributes that made Barry Alvarez an intriguing name when USC had an opening for a football coach.

He took down-in-the-dumps Wisconsin and turned it into a respectable program. He has won three Big Ten championships in the last eight years. And--best of all--he kept smacking the Bruins around when they met in the Rose Bowl.

But there’s a drawback, one that makes it impossible to imagine him wearing a headset on the Coliseum sidelines.

“Bob [Toledo] and I have become friends,” Alvarez admits. “We’re about the same age, we’ve been around this racket for a while, run into each other, see each other at different functions. We get along well.”

We couldn’t have the USC coach and UCLA coach acting all chummy, perhaps even getting together for a Sunday barbecue.

And there’s another reason the concept might not have worked. You hate to say it in the world of college football (where, to steal from Chris Rock, a coach is only as faithful as his job options allow him to be), but it’s just possible that Wisconsin could be the last stop for Alvarez.

“There’s never been anything that’s been appealing enough to make me want to leave,” Alvarez said. “I’ve listened to different situations, listened to a number of pro jobs--I pretty much decided I didn’t want to go in that direction. Just nothing that’s appealed to me enough to make me want to pick up.”

There’s also another little matter.

“I really didn’t talk to USC,” Alvarez says.

Of course, that would fit right in with a coaching search that narrowed down to a man in the midst of a one-win NFL season and another guy with no track record in college, a search that never made a run at any African American candidates, a search that never attempted a bold hire of a hot young coordinator.

It’s a wonder Alvarez’s name came up at all.

“I really don’t know how that all got started,” Alvarez said. “Some friends of mine called. I said I didn’t know anything about it. We were playing in Hawaii at the time. I don’t know anything about the job.”

So he’s still at Wisconsin, busy preparing the Badgers for yet another meeting with UCLA, this time in today’s Sun Bowl game in El Paso.

“I’ve got a good situation here,” Alvarez said. “They’ve been good to me. I’ve got a long-term contract. I’ve been made associate athletic director. I never say never, but I could be very happy here.”

Alvarez takes pride in two things: the consistency of the program and the development of players.

The Badgers have had only one losing record since they broke through with the school’s first Rose Bowl victory after the 1993 season.

“We weren’t one-shot wonders, have one great year and go back to the basement and slug it out again,” Alvarez said. “We were able to sustain our success. We wanted to build our program with a solid foundation. That’s what’s been . . . most rewarding to me.

“Our business comes down to getting good players, getting a group of guys that buy into your system and buy into your program and do it your way.”

Although Alvarez is considered a good recruiter and the Badgers land their share of solid classes, they don’t sit in the middle of a fertile talent state such as Florida, Ohio, or California.

Yet they have managed to land at least one player on the first-team All-American list each of the last three seasons. Wisconsin also produced the 1999 Heisman Trophy winner, running back Ron Dayne, and this year’s Jim Thorpe Award winner, cornerback Jamar Fletcher.

There have been some times to forget, however. Alvarez’s son, Chad, was arrested for killing a fellow student’s parrot in a microwave.

And this year, in something straight out of Florida State, 26 Badgers were suspended by the NCAA for receiving extra benefits: unadvertised discounts on shoes at a Madison-area store.

The suspensions were staggered over the first four games and, much like UCLA in the wake of last year’s handicapped-parking suspensions, the rhythm was lost. After taking care of three nonconference opponents--one of them Pac-10 co-champion Oregon--the Badgers lost their first three Big Ten games.

“Bob Toledo and I talked about this,” Alvarez said. “It disrupts your chemistry. Our staff probably did our best coaching job this year. You have no continuity. You have different kids week to week. Earlier in the year, when you should be getting better, we were just sustaining--and maybe getting worse. I thought we were better our last scrimmage of two-a-days [in the summer] than we were in the middle of the season.”

But the Badgers did manage to salvage a 4-4 record in conference play, 8-4 overall. It’s not quite what Alvarez expected from a team that he’d thought was going to be the best he ever had.

But if they can finish with a winning record and a bowl trip in a suspension-marred, injury-riddled season, it bodes well for what can happen when everything goes Wisconsin’s way.

It looks as if Alvarez will be around to see it.

“Every situation is different,” he said. “Every person is different. Some people have gone into this business with specific jobs that they felt would be their plum jobs. They felt they wanted to be in the NFL.

“Some wanted to coach at a specific school. Lou [Holtz] always talked about his dream was to coach at Notre Dame [where Alvarez was an assistant to Holtz for three years before taking the Wisconsin job].

“My goal, when I got into this business, was to take a program that was down, build it up and sustain it. I never had any aspirations of being at any one school, being an NFL coach.”

It just happened that the right place was at Wisconsin, with everything working the way he imagined.

“So far,” Alvarez said.

Things change. Maybe the next time, Alvarez could be persuaded to leave.

But he’d have to ditch that Toledo character first.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: ja.adande@latimes.com.