In the 1980s, Wisconsin sports fans didn't have a lot to cheer about, but there wasn't much to fret over either. Precisely the opposite situation is now before us.
The Green Bay Packers, Milwaukee Bucks, Marquette Warriors and both the football and basketball (and hockey) Wisconsin Badgers are now established teams. The Packers and the football Badgers have both reached the pinnacle of their sport (Super Bowl and Rose Bowl victories) while the three basketball teams are established contenders with greater triumphs on the horizon. Zing, boom, tarrerrel, we've got the blues on the run.
Funny thing about getting good, though: it makes you deathly afraid of turning bad again. And we may be staring that possibility square in the facemask.
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Ron Wolf and Barry Alvarez raise abandonment issues among Milwaukee fans |
Packers' esteemed general manager Ron Wolf retired Thursday after leading the Packers to eight winning seasons in nine tries. Among them were two Super Bowl trips and one championship. In all, Green Bay went to the playoffs six times under his watch and won 101 times. He also acquired two Hall of Famers for next-to-nothing and turned them into green and gold gods: Brett Favre and Reggie White.
There is no doubting Wolf's legacy. But as he hands the keys over to coach and now GM Mike Sherman, visions of Forrest Gregg creep into everyone's minds.
Gregg was the last coach to fill the dual role in Green Bay, and instead of being remembered as the linchpin of Green Bay's championship offensive lines of the 1960s, he is more closely associated with the cheap shot antics of Ken Stills and Charles Martin. Sherman will certainly consider that in the days ahead.
But Wolf and Sherman weren't the only distressing news around the state Thursday, as rumors continued to spiral that Badgers coach Barry Alvarez would take the vacant position at Miami. While Alvarez's departure isn't certain as of Friday morning, the thought of him leaving (along with juniors Michael Bennett and Jamar Fletcher, both Draft-bound) is enough to make any UW fan's beer taste flat. After all, he took over a moribund program from Don Morton and eventually won three Rose Bowls.
And Alvarez has been only one part of a dual resurrection in Badgerland; head coach Dick Bennett also turned a Big 10 bottom-feeder into a national player when he guided his hoops team to the Final Four last March. Of course, Bennett opted for retirement earlier this season for basically the same reason Wolf did -- he no longer had the energy for the job.
To continue the theme, Bucks coach George Karl was linked to the opening at North Carolina last season and may have taken it had not circumstances stood in the way. Anxious feelings regarding his departure are reminiscent of those we share over Alvarez with our morning coffee.
Whether or not Alvarez goes is immaterial, however, to this discussion. The larger point is that we now have something to lose whereas we never did before. That is the tradeoff for our teams being printed higher in the standings.
Before the Wolf and Alvarez situations came to bear this week, I had thought about the recent success of the three main basketball teams in the area: Marquette, the Bucks and the Badgers. One of them seems to be in a crucial game every night, and there is always a reason to check the scores online or read the morning paper. Frankly, it was easier when the teams were bad and nothing was at stake.
Sports fans are silly, though, because nothing really is at stake. Nothing, at least, in the greater sense; but we know that. Still, seemingly rationale people sit on edge waiting to hear if a football coach will leave them, while others are interviewed on the cold streets by roving reporters wondering if a coach can also be a GM.
But apprehension will be there every time a Karl or Alvarez or Wolf or Bennett talks of leaving us. This is only because we remember the smiles they caused, the talks about big games at family gatherings, the unexpected, frivolous happiness that a surprise Final Four trip can inspire. Do those things truly matter? I don't know, but I'm nervous about losing them just the same.
Sports shots columnist Tim Gutowski was born in a hospital in West Allis and his sporting heart never really left. He grew up in a tiny town 30 miles west of the city named Genesee and was in attendance at County Stadium the day the Brewers clinched the 1981 second-half AL East crown. I bet you can't say that.
Though Tim moved away from Wisconsin (to Iowa and eventually the suburbs of Chicago) as a 10-year-old, he eventually found his way back to Milwaukee. He remembers fondly the pre-Web days of listenting to static-filled Brewers games on AM 620 and crying after repeated Bears' victories over the Packers.
