In late 1989, my wife and I attended a UW Alumni reception at a holiday college hockey tournament held in Milwaukee. During the evening of mingling, we visited with Pat Richter’s wife, Renee. She told us Pat was not there because he was in South Bend offering the UW head football coaching job to an exceptional candidate. Pat was planning to make that announcement upon returning to Madison. A couple of days later, Barry Alvarez was introduced as the new head coach. We felt we had an inside scoop!

I also served on the UW Athletic Board from 2007 to 2011, representing the Wisconsin Alumni Association. During that period for a couple of years, the Athletic Department took coaches from all sports and senior staff on a June bus tour around the state promoting the programs. At the time, we lived in Oostburg and one of the tour stops was at nearby Kohler. Kohler had raised a large tent in the community shopping center parking lot, and the alumni and public had the opportunity to meet and talk to coaches and former athletes which drew a large enthusiastic crowd. As the event was winding down, and people were leaving, it started to rain. Since our car was not close to the tent, we waited for the rain to let up. When it did, we were walking to our car when the door opened on one of the buses carrying the coaches and staff parked about 25 yards from where we were. Barry popped out flagged us down just to say “hello” and spend a couple of minutes visiting with us. He wanted to know our opinion on whether this event was successful from our perspective. … It was! Totally unsolicited, and unexpected!