APTwo days after reports first surfaced that Gary Andersen was taking over for Bret Bielema at Wisconsin, Andersen has officially taken over for Bielema.
In a press release Thursday evening, UW athletic director Barry Alvarez announced the obvious, naming Andersen as the Badgers’ next head football coach. Andersen will be officially introduced at an 11 a.m. ET press conference Friday morning that will be televised live on the Big Ten Network.
Andersen is expected to earn in the neighborhood of $1.8 million at UW; at USU last season, he earned $415,000. In Bielema’s final season with the Badgers, and before taking the Arkansas job, he made $2.64 million.
Here’s a portion of UW’s announcement of the Andersen hiring that deals with their new coach’s recent — and successful — history with the Aggies:
Andersen becomes the 29th head coach in Wisconsin football history. He spent the previous four seasons as the head coach at Utah State, leading the Aggies to a 26-24 record. In 2012, Utah State had the most successful season in school history, winning a school-record 11 games, going undefeated in the WAC and capturing its first outright league title since 1936. The Aggies defeated Toledo, 41-15, to win the 2012 Famous Idaho Potato Bowl.
Here’s one more note on how Andersen exited USU, which should be required reading for every future head coach who decides to take a better job:
“Utah State coach Gary Andersen called every one of his players after news broke, going to
Badgers. Took till 2:30 am. 106 calls or so.”
In other words, the anti-Todd Graham. Very, very classy, Coach Andersen. Amazing we have to applaud adults for doing things the adult way, though.
And no one even cares.
He actually “called” all of his players????
No sticky notes like Petrino???
Very nice coach. Class act my man. Class act.
Maybe he can bring some excitement to Wisconsin football…
mgavin78 says:
Dec 20, 2012 7:07 PM
And no one even cares.
Said No one, except one stupid ass person.
Good for UW. Sounds like they “finally” got it right. WAC is not the B1G though. LOL.
Sounds like a class guy.
His Utah St squad almost (& probably should’ve) upset the Badgers this past season.
Glad to have him at my alma mater.
Hopefully this guy will have guts to make call on 2yd line to beat his old boss Urban.
It’s nice to see someone doing things the right way and not the easy way. Tommy Tuberville should take some notes from this guy.
Best part of the whole process, as noted, is Andersen calling his players INDIVIDUALLY. The easy way out would have been to call a “team meeting”, take 5 minutes, and say goodbye. I bet this guy proves in the long run to be very ethical in his recruiting and how he runs the Wisconsin program. I’m an SEC guy, but I’ll root for this guy all day long. Very, very classy way to handle moving on to a new challenge. Congratulations, Coach Andersen. Looks like the Badger faithful got themselves a terrific replacement for Bielema.