Badgers look to send Alvarez out a winner

ORLANDO, Fla. – Barry Alvarez is preparing for another bowl game, celebrating his birthday and getting ready to leave Wisconsin’s sidelines on his own terms.

The man who took a one-time Big Ten Conference joke to three Rose Bowl wins and three league titles leads the 21st-ranked Badgers into his coaching finale today against No. 7 Auburn in the Capital One Bowl.

Peppered with questions about the end of his successful 16-year run all season, Alvarez has avoided sugary sentiment and misty-eyed nostalgic reflections.

It doesn’t mean he’s not savoring the experience.

“I love bowl games. I really do,” said Alvarez, who turned 59 on Friday. “I like it more than the kids do. I grew up a poor kid in western Pennsylvania, and I went to Nebraska because I saw them play in the Orange Bowl and I wanted to play in a bowl game. I cherish the memories of that.”

The Badgers (9-3) had gone 9-36 in the four seasons before he arrived in 1990 and were typically playing in a half-empty home stadium.

Then came Alvarez, a former assistant at Notre Dame and Iowa who had made the coaching rounds at several high schools.

The Badgers enter his final game as 10 1/2 -point underdogs to the Tigers (9-2), who finished the regular season as one of the nation’s hottest teams and have won three consecutive bowl games. Auburn closed the season with wins over Georgia and Alabama, making a late bid for a BCS bowl berth.

The game features two of the top offenses in the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference, led by tailbacks Brian Calhoun of Wisconsin and Kenny Irons of Auburn, against two defenses that couldn’t quite reproduce their stinginess of 2004.

But, really, those are mere sidebars to the departure of Alvarez, even though he might not want it that way.