Wisconsin To Hire Utah State Football Coach

[Harry]

The announcement is not expected until tomorrow, but the Wisconsin Badgers will reportedly hire Utah State Football Coach Gary Andersen to take over the Badgers Football program. After Brett Bielema vacated the UW head coaching position opting for Arkansas, athletic director Barry Alvarez has been interviewing a list of possible candidates.

Gary Anderson led the Aggies to their first bowl victory in 19 years, a 41-15 win over Toledo in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl. Utah State played Wisconsin this season and the Aggies nearly upset the Badgers. The game was Utah State's to win but a missed 37 yard field goal as time expired sailed wide right for the Aggies kicker. UW held on to a 16-14 win.

Read more: http://www.doorcountydailynews.com/sports/details.cfm?clientid=28&id=58538

[SilverEagle]

"Andersen led Utah State to its first bowl victory in 19 seasons on Saturday, a Prior to Utah State, Andersen was an assistant at Utah from 2004-08 (defensive coordinator from 2005-08), head coach at Southern Utah in 2003 and an assistant at Utah from 1997-2002."

Well, imagine that. Someone this successful with only one year of prior head coaching experience (D-2 or D-3 school). This rest of his experience is as an assistant.

[untjim1995]

"Andersen led Utah State to its first bowl victory in 19 seasons on Saturday, a Prior to Utah State, Andersen was an assistant at Utah from 2004-08 (defensive coordinator from 2005-08), head coach at Southern Utah in 2003 and an assistant at Utah from 1997-2002."

Well, imagine that. Someone this successful with only one year of prior head coaching experience (D-2 or D-3 school). This rest of his experience is as an assistant.

This is why I always think that the SBC run we had from 2001-2004 was not considered anything special by the outside college football world. Dickey had 4 straight championships and couldn't even get a sniff as a head coach anywhere else above here. I'm still convinced that he thought he would move upwards after that 2003 or 2004 season. Not surprisingly, our recruiting went back down very quickly from where it had managed to get in the years before. A coach who pulled off what Andersen just pulled off, at a school like Utah State, even if it was against a conference that was not highly regarded, should be getting looks from the bigger teams. We have seen it happen big time now at Arkansas State and Western Kentucky and Louisiana Tech. But, for many reasons, it never happened here with Dickey--and it appears that the rest of the college football world knew what they were looking at, since he has never been hired again as a head coach anywhere. I think these ADs know that an offense like his and a personality like his would never bring in the attendance or $$$ in the way that you hoped a new hire would do.

[GrayEagle]

Wow!!! Utah State and San Jose State were selected by the Mountain West Conference largely because both had outstanding teams this past year (ok, SJSU partially due to market potential). Both head coaches are now gone...Anderson to Wisconsin; McIntyre to Colorado.

[NM Green]

Utah State was solid and he is a good hire. I saw the Aggies beat SJSU in Cali this year. Both of those programs were Big 12 Baylor/Texas Tech quality.

Can't discount the early decade run. I don't care what league you are in, if you win 20 plus conference games in a row and go to four bowl games for the first time in 50 years - you have accomplished something quite phenomenal. It was quite the ride as well!

GMG