As Alvarez’s hand-picked successor enters his fourth season as Wisconsin’s head football coach, Bielema must halt a steady decline in the program. Bielema’s Badgers were 12-1 in 2006, capping the season with a win over Arkansas in the Capital One Bowl to finish the year ranked fifth in the nation. A year later the record slipped to 9-4 and Wisconsin lost 21-17 to Tennessee in the Outback Bowl.

Then came last year’s miserable 7-6 season that saw the Badgers barely scrape by Fresno State, one-win Minnesota, and I-AA opponent Cal Poly. The season also included a two-point loss to a three-win Michigan team, and ended with an embarrassing effort against Florida State in the Champs Sports Bowl.

Every year under Bielema the Badgers have gotten worse.

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When he took over, they were a perennially ranked team. Now they enter the 2009 season just hoping to become bowl eligible.

Bielema is a defensive-minded coach, and was UW’s defensive coordinator under Alvarez. He must focus his attention on that side of the ball because Wisconsin has seen its points allowed average swell from 12 in 2006 to nearly 27 last season. Fixing that will go along way in reversing the downward spiral of Wisconsin’s record. It won’t be easy with just three returning full-time starters – safety Jay Valai, defensive end O’Brien Schofield and linebacker Jaevery McFadden – returning.

The inexperienced defense has talent though and is ready to accept the challenge.

“There are no excuses for us on defense to give up more points every year,” Valai told Madison.com. “We’d better reverse that trend because we have to. With the type of offense we have, we’re going to ground and pound and beat the mess out of you … so we’ve got to come through.”

Wisconsin has loads of talent at the skill positions on offense, but will have to get consistent play from first-year starter Scott Tolzien. The junior beat out highly touted freshman Curt Phillips and last year’s starter, senior Dustin Sherer, for the job.

Wisconsin lost some starters on the offensive line, but the one thing that has always been a constant in Madison is a good, big, strong offensive front. The Badgers play power football, and the big uglies up front should be able to reload and clear holes for a stable of running backs led by John Clay and Zach Brown.

Clay is the official No. 1, but Brown is a good change-of-pace back that has the ability to take 20 carries a game. Also in the mix is true freshman Montee Ball, a super prospect from Timberland High School just went of St. Louis. Redshirt freshman Erik Smith has blazing speed and good hands out of the backfield – both good for a third-down threat.

The Badgers bring back nearly all of their pass catchers. Travis Beckum’s injury last year opened things up for Garrett Graham to become the featured tight end. Returning at wideout are David Gilreath, Isaac Anderson, and Nick Toon, son of former Badgers great Al Toon. What that trio can’t afford to do is drop passes, something that plagued the unit a season ago.

That’s the good and the bad. The yin and the yang. So what’s the prognosis?

Well, the schedule is managable.

Wisconsin opens at home Saturday with Northern Illinois, a 6-7 team a season ago. Then it’s two more home games against Fresno State and I-AA Wofford. So a 3-0 start is likely, but Wisconsin was 3-0 last year also.

Week four is the first real test, a home game against Michigan State, which is a team considered a dark horse to win the Big Ten. Win or lose, if the Badgers at least look crisp and focused against what is on paper a more talented team, then things could be looking bright. Last year’s contest in East Lansing was a 25-24 win for Sparty.

Another winnable game is in week five, but it’s also Wisconsin’s first road game. Minnesota was dismal last year, but the Badgers barely won to keep Paul Bunyan’s Axe – the best rivalry trophy in all of college football. Minnesota will be improved this year, so it will be no walk in the park inside the Gophers’ brand new stadium for the Badgers.

And this is when the schedule gets really tough.

Although Wisconsin played Ohio State tough last year, the Buckeyes still won, and a similar fate could await the Badgers this year. The Buckeyes are stacked and experienced.

The following week is homecoming in Madison, but it’s also against highly-touted Iowa. It sucks losing the homecoming game, but just think of all the comforting drinks that will be comsumed on State Street after the game.

So 4-3 is likely after seven games, but there might not be a loss on the schedule after that with home games against Purdue and troubled Michigan. The road contests are at Indiana, Northwestern and Hawaii.

A 9-3, or even an 8-4 record will reverse the trend of the last three years, and should save Alvarez from having to make a difficult decision.

Bret Bielema just might be able to stave off the “Fire Bret Bielema” calls for at least one more season.

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* – Barry Alvarez / Brett Bielema photo credit: Wisconsin Badger Sports Fan

* – Jay Valai photo credit: BadgerBeat.com

* – Brett Bielema photo credit: Wizard of Odds

But as I scrolled down, I saw something interesting. The phrase “fire bret bielema” had driven two visits; meaning that, most likely, some drunk buffoon in Madison watched Wisconsin get trashed by Iowa today and then typed “fire bret bielema” into Google and landed on my previous post that paid homage to the biggest losers in college football last weekend. More importantly, it means that at least some Badger fans have decided that one bad month of football should spell the end of a pretty good start to the Bret Bielema era so far. Look at the numbers coming into the season:

• 21-5 overall record, 12-4 in the Big Ten
• Two straight bowl appearances, winning the Capital One Bowl in 1996
• Consistently in the top 10, occasionally breaking into the Top 5

As a Tennessee fan, numbers like these look pretty good. And when Wisconsin jumped out to a 4-0 record before beginning Big Ten play, Brett Bielema sat at 25-5 through his first 30 games as a head coach. That is an outstanding winning percentage of 83.3%. Even with four straight losses, Bielema is 25-9, a winning percentage of 73.5%.

Could firing Bret Bielema really be a reasonable topic of thought and conversation for Badger Nation?

Well, look at the losses. The Badgers had the Michigan game in hand, and inexplicably allowed the Wolverines back into the game, which they subsequently stole away in the final minutes. The next week, Wisconsin played valiantly against Ohio State in Madison but lost 20-17. These two losses seemed to take the wind out of the Wisconsin sails. Over the last two Saturdays, Bret Bielema and the BADgers have been outscored 86-23 by Penn State and Iowa. They either didn’t show up or are much less talented than in previous years.

And perhaps therein lies the problem.

We have seen over and over in college sports a highly successful or legendary coach retire, only to see his successor post great records over his first few seasons using the players the previous coach recruited. In college football, think Larry Coker at Miami. The Hurricanes continued to dominate while Butch Davis’ recruits were at the U. Once they had all moved on to the NFL, Coker was unable to similarly stock the cupboard. For a basketball example, look no further than the Mike Davis era after Bob Knight retired. Davis took highly recruited players like Jared Jeffries, Dane Fife, and AJ Moye to an NCAA title game — seeming to be the perfect antidone to Knight’s bombastic coaching style, but reaping the results of Knight’s ability to teach and (at least back then) recruit.

But what happened to Coker and Davis after a few years? They failed…gradually but, ultimately, miserably. And both programs are still picking up the pieces.

Are these past four games the beginning of the demise for Wisconsin? And if so, should Wisconsin cut its losses now and bring in an experienced or successful up-and-coming coach to stop the bleeding?

I can’t answer that. I don’t really follow Wisconsin enough and, admittedly, have not watched them play. Perhaps some of you Badger fans can chime in with comments. Does this year’s team look less talented? Has the level of play, discipline, and strategic decision-making diminished substantially since Barry Alvarez left the sidelines and became the Athletic Director? I would be interested to know the answers from people who are informed.

Because the reality is this: if the answers to the questions I just posed are “yes” then the leadership of Wisconsin’s athletic department should act swiftly. If Bielema is in over his head, if he is great guy but just a glorified coordinator or position coach (like Mike Davis was), and if he can’t effectively bring talent to Madison, then this four game slide will be the beginning of a trend and not just a hiccup. I’ve seen it happen too often, and seen athletic departments wait way too long to pull the trigger for change when all of the symptoms of current and future mediocrity are present.

Unfortunately, it looks like Indiana might have done that with Bill Lynch in the aftermatch of Terry Hoeppner’s tragic death and the Hoosiers’ exciting run to a bowl game last year. The problem is that, while Lynch coached under Terry Hoeppner, he was an assistant for a reason. He is a solid tactical coach and teacher, but perhaps not the charismatic leader and program steward that a successful college football program needs.

When someone is miscast in a role, as these last four games have shown that Bret Bielema may be, it requires acute foresight from the leadership above to make a decision in the best interest of the school. Patience may be a virtue, but so is judgment. The ideal, obviously, is to combine both; to give coaches enough time to prove themselves, but not to run a program into the ground if they can’t.

I don’t think it’s time for Bret Bielema fired, but it certainly is time for the Barry Alvarez and the Badger athletic department to be vigilantly on point. If Bielema is not the guy, he could unwittingly lead the erosion of the tradition that Barry Alvarez built up. This happened at Indiana, it happened at Miami, and Wisconsin has not built-in immunity to it happened to them.

Not every school can be like Michigan State in basketball, where Jud Heathcote handed over the reins to Tom Izzo and the program maintained or arguably even jumped up a level.

I guess the way I’d feel if I was a Wisconsin fan is that it’s still a little bit early to be doing Google searches on firing Bret Bielema, or creating www.firebretbielema.com, but I can certainly understand and relate to your frustration.

[tags]wisconsin badgers, college football, ncaa football, bret bielema[/tags]