{image1} There are a lot of legendary names in the big book of Wisconsin sports history.

Curly Lambeau built the Packers and Vince Lombardi made the champions. Hank Aaron and Warren Spahn made Milwaukee major league, and Robin Yount was a hero to the children of the Braves generation.

Oscar Robertson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar brought the Bucks an NBA Championship, while Al McGuire made Marquette a household name.

Few people though, have had more of an impact on the state's athletic landscape than Barry Alvarez.

Alvarez, who announced this week that the 2005 season will be his last as head football coach at the University of Wisconsin, did much more than just resuscitate a moribund college football team.

He reenergized an athletic department that was flat broke, in debt up to its knees, and had no plan, into a streamlined machine that has now added sports, and built amazing facilities like the Kohl Center, the softball complex, as well as the recently completed Camp Randall Stadium Rennovation.

He ruled like a subdued Lombardi, and that's why his teams were successful. The buck stopped with him, and that explains a lot why his teams averaged 7 wins a season during Alvarez's 15-years, compared to just 4.2 wins a year in the 100 previous seasons of Badger football.

Alvarez will have great success as the Athletic Director at Wisconsin. He's proven enough that he has what it takes to run a tight ship.

And that's what's disappointing about this whole deal.

Outside of the Beltline, Alvarez's legacy won't be the three Big Ten Championships, and three Rose Bowl victories. Nor will it be the 108-70-4 record, or the fact that the Badgers played in 10 bowl games, winning seven times.

Instead, Alvarez is going to be ripped for not having won a national championship, his lack of a big-time quarterback recruit, and a recent string of off-the-field problems with some of his players.

Those are unfair assessments of Alvarez's accomplishments. As the coach sat on the dais recalling hi best memories, he thought of the overtime game in Minnesota that he watched from a hospital bed, and hobbling down from the press box to a roaring ovation after Ron Dayne broke the all time NCAA rushing record.

And he thought about that first championship team.

He nearly broke down talking about Joe Panos and Joe Rudolph, saving the lives of students buried at the bottom of the Camp Randall bleachers after the Michigan game. But he smiled, remember how his "lunch-pail gang" beat Michigan State in Tokyo to earn a trip to the Rose Bowl for the first time in 31 years.

Barry Alvarez will stay on the sidelines one more season before turning the reigns over to defensive coordinator Bert Bielema. As he walks into the new-and-improved Camp Randall this season, he can take a good look around.

The new addition, the luxury suites, the sea of red, made up of more than 70,000 fanatics ... none of them would be there if it wasn't for him.