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When Wisconsin Badgers head football coach Barry Alvarez announced that he would be retiring from coaching duties at the end of the 2005 season, that might have been cause for UW fans to panic.  But Coach Alvarez arrived at his press conference as well-prepared as if he were arriving at a bowl game.  He had already tapped Badgers defensive coordinator Bret Bielema as the team's next leader.  The fact that Alvarez had the chance to hand-pick his replacement and spend a whole season grooming him for the job had to put Wisconsin players, alumni, and fans at ease about the impending change.

Judging by Bielema's first month in office, the transition is going as well as anyone could have hoped.  He has spent the last few weeks hiring some assistant coaches to help him revamp the Wisconsin program.  So far, he has named appointed four coaches to different posts, three on defense and one on offense.

Bielema has been involved with defenses for a majority of his coaching career, and it's clear that defense is going to remain a top priority when he's running the show.  Towards that end, he has brought in Mike Hankwitz, Dave Doeren, and Kerry Cooks to  help with both coaching and recruiting duties.  All three men have experience with NCAA Division I-A teams, so they will be able to hit the ground running at Wisconsin.

Mike Hankwitz was the defensive coordinator of the Colorado Buffaloes, where he won several Big 12 North Division titles as well as a national championship in 1990.  His teams are known for playing very aggressively and going after the quarterback with a lot of different blitz schemes.  In fact, Hankwitz-led defenses have been nationally ranked in the top-25 poll for 13 of his 21 years as a defensive coach.  Wisconsin Badger fans are definitely looking for Hankwitz to get that level of play from next year's team as well.

Also helping Hankwitz run the defense will be Dave Doeren, who was appointed by Bielema as the team's co-coordinator on defense.  I think Bielema made a great decision by picking up Doeren.  First, Doeren has delivered excellent results in relatively short periods of time.  He spent three years coaching linebackers for Kansas, and in that time, the team was very successful.  They won the Fort Worth Bowl over Houston, and their defense was the second-best in the tough Big 12 conference that features such storied football programs as Texas (this year's national champions), Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Colorado.  Second, Doeren is considered one of the brightest up-and-comers in NCAA coaching.  He's got a lot of experience and had a lot of success in his career, so people tend to forget that he's just 34 years old.  In my opinion, Doeren is shaping up to be head coaching material someday -- and I think it will be sooner rather than later.  

Kerry Cooks has the least experience out of the three men that Bielema has chosen for his coaching staff, but he obviously has a lot of potential.  Cooks has spent the last two seasons as a defensive backs coach at the collegiate level.  In 2005, he was a member of the Minnesota Golden Gophers' staff, and in 2004 he was with Western Illinois.  He will fill the same capacity for the Wisconsin Badgers.

As a longtime Wisconsin fan, I am glad to see the new coaching staff being announced this early in the year.  It will give both the players and the coaches an opportunity to get accustomed to one another before summer two-a-days start, which will hopefully make things easier for everyone.  There's no doubt that Barry Alvarez was a beloved leader at Wisconsin, and he will definitely be missed.  So it's good that Bielema is taking these steps to ensure that the program doesn't miss a beat in 2006.

I for one am looking forward to the new, and perhaps improved, Wisconsin team.  It will be interesting to see what a defensive-minded head coach will bring to the table.  Wisconsin finished 9-3 overall last year, which was good enough to put them in a tie with Michigan for second in the Big 10 conference.  I think they have a good chance to knock Iowa off the top of the heap and bring the conference title back to Madison next season.