This Week in Badgers: Let's Honor Some Former Players

Hey there. Been a while. No, I don’t think TWIB is “back” but this weekend I started writing a Badger thought and didn’t have a place to put it so here we are. Maybe I’ll do this a little more often, probably in a different format and definitely something less labor intensive. I’m open to any ideas. If you only subscribed because you enjoyed Remembering Some Guys and want to hit that unsubscribe button, I totally get that. 

Anyways with that preamble out of the way, here we go: 

Spring practice is over and outside of an occasional recruiting story or NIL outrage piece, we’ve reached the lean time on the College Football schedule. So I’m left to come up with new things that probably only I care about. Today it’s honoring former Badger players. 

One of the draws of college football for me is the constant turnover of players. Every year you get 25 new faces, stories and possibilities to follow. With so many players there is just an immense amount of history that can be celebrated. 

One thing the Badger football program could do a better job at is recognizing this history. It isn’t like they have ignored it - the Camp Randall 100 was fabulous (RIP to the website though), employing honorary captains, social media flashbacks, the UW Athletics Hall of Fame and a spot on Paul Chryst’s coaching staff are just a few cool ways they honor past players. 

All of that is great, but when you walk into Camp Randall there’s very little acknowledgment of this history. Yes, you’ll see the Barry Alvarez Statue, Barry Alvarez Field, Kellner Hall, the retired numbers and Rose Bowl appearances and tons of advertisements and ribbon boards; but Ron Dayne is the only person who has played in the last 60 years to receive any permanent recognition at Camp Randall. 

We should change this. 

Retiring more numbers isn’t practical, there are too many players and not enough numbers already, but thanks to the 2005 renovations there is a massive amount of façade space that could be utilized for recognition. The Packers do this and honor any former player selected for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the Badgers could do something similar for players selected for the UW Athletics Hall of Fame. 

Putting the names up of any football player who reaches the UW HOF would be a great way to do this. The infrastructure for picking the players is in place and honoring them in addition to the UW HOF would be a great way to get something new in Camp Randall and start a new tradition. 

The current luxury box/facade is a bit of a mess and has the feel of “person just moved to a new apartment and threw all the artwork from the old one on the walls even if it doesn’t look right” to it. It lists both Big Ten Titles and Rose Bowl appearances, the retired numbers were thrown over there when a ribbon board was put in on the west side of the stadium. With the new End Zone renovation it seems like a good time to rethink how this should look. 

The UW HOF is where they should start.

Here are the players that have been inducted from the Alvarez-Era on: Troy Vincent, Don Davy, Joe Panos, Ron Dayne, Cory Raymer. Jamar Fletcher, Chris McIntosh, Jim Leonhard, Lee Evans, Darrell Bevell, Brooks Bollinger,  Kevin Stemke, Joe Thomas, Aaron Gibson, Tom Burke and Gabe Carimi. 

We might quibble a little bit on the specifics - I’m not sure how Bollinger got on there for example, but that’s a pretty good list! I also had no idea about how exclusive it was before looking it up. It is unfortunately pretty forgettable - the player gives a quick wave during a commercial break and you move on. I’m as big of Badger fan as anyone out there, and barely knew it existed. Putting the name on the facade would be such a cool moment to see and stays there forever. 

One thing I appreciate about the UW HOF is how selective they are and how it focuses on how the player performed at Wisconsin. If we’re going to honor former players, let’s look at what they did with their time at Wisconsin. I don’t think Fletcher, McIntosh, Gibson, Carimi and many others having ho-hum NFL careers should in any way be held against them when honoring Badger greats. 

There are a couple downsides when honoring individuals, the main one of course is that people are flawed and it can lead to some uncomfortable situations when it comes to honoring them. Tom Burke comes to mind as someone currently in the HOF you probably don’t want up there. Other players have had issues to varying degrees post playing career as well. Having them in the UW Hall of Fame is one thing, looking at their name in the stadium seven Saturdays a year is another. I don’t have a good answer here, I don’t think having a rotating list of names based on off-field issues is necessarily practical but I get why people would have reservations about honoring some players. 

Another less serious “issue” to think about is - if we want to use the facade to celebrate the history of Wisconsin football, do we need to slightly expand the qualifications for entry? I call this the JJ Watt/Russell Wilson conundrum. 

Every player in the UW HOF had an extremely decorated career at Wisconsin. Almost all were first team All-Americans, played 3-4 years, won an award for best player at the positions, or were Brooks Bollinger.

JJ Watt transferred in from Central Michigan, played two years before leaving with eligibility left really only excelling in 2010, finishing his career with 11.5 sacks. If you’re just comparing UW careers, Wendall Bryant was much more productive and decorated in college, for example.

Similarly Russell Wilson only played 1 year, was extremely awesome and you know his whole story so I won’t repeat it, but he joins Watt as a tremendous players in short stints. With how culturally dominant the NFL is in 2022, I think it makes sense to weigh that a little bit when telling the Wisconsin football story, especially if the honoree is still connected to the program and a good ambassador like Watt is and Wilson pretends to be. 

With more and more players transferring the five year Wisconsin standout may be less and less common, no harm in recognizing this. 

Lastly, perhaps the biggest practical issue is that there are so many football players in the HOF, including a bunch of pre-WW2 players, coaches and admin staff. By my count there are 85 current football players/coaches/admin in the HOF. 16 of which were in the inaugural class in 1991. I love reading about old players and I like that their stories are told, but if there’s a space crunch I don’t necessarily think we need to have a guy who scored 6 TDs in the 1933 season up there. Let’s make the initially unpopular decision of limiting it to players who played from 1950 on and make it only players — no coaches, admin or big boosters. We’re not booting them out of the HOF, just making aesthetic decisions about Camp Randall. People would get used to this. 

I think getting the names up on the facade and elevating the UW HOF makes for a lot of fun debates of who gets in. For me there are 5 obvious names from the past 10 years  - Ball, Borland, Gordon, Taylor and TJ Edwards. All were great Badgers that dominated the awards list. Get ‘em up there.

People will surely have other takes, this will give us something to do during the lulls of Summer, recognize the history and contributions of the players and will create some moments during the season at the unveiling ceremony.