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An Interview With:

WISCONSINCOACH BRET BIELEMA

THE MODERATOR: Okay. We'll goahead and get started here. The first coach up isWisconsin head coach Bret Bielema.

COACH BIELEMA: Thank you, Julie.Sorry I was a little late. I was on the phone withCommissioner (Jim) Delany and I have the newexpansion guidelines right here in front of me(laughter). Thought you guys would like that one.

It is great to be here. I don't know if I liketo be the opening kick-off. I would have deferredthis one if I could. But, you know, to be here inChicago and be ready, we got our three guys herewith us.

I will note that over the last six months,one of my 2010 resolutions was to be more friendlywith the media. So I'm going to point out over thelast month I've actually let a major magazine comein and shoot me cooking dinner in my house for two of my buddies, because it's a little tradition Ihave to try and get better relations there.

I actually played golf with a media member yesterday for 18 holes on a Sunday, which I never thought I'd ever do, but enjoyed every minute of it.And tip it off, top it off, to come here this morningand start off this whole thing with you guys. I hopeyou'll reflect it later on with some of the questionsyou give me and my players. I'm trying to expandmy relations with you guys. I was going to walk inwith a Rose Bowl hat but I thought it would be alittle over the top to give you a story to write.

This is an exciting season for two reasons.First off, we have a lot of good players comingback, and I really think that the players that wehave returning for the first game or the firstmeeting that we had in January, we -- I have a littletradition we'll come back our first day of classesand we'll start off with that afternoon meeting with

the entire team in there. And as the meeting windsdown, then I'll actually keep all of our seniors, allthe guys that are going to be seniors for thisupcoming season, after for a few minutes.

And one of the things that first jumped outto me as the rest of the team left, all 16 guys thatwere in those first two rows of my meeting roomhad all started a game during their time here at theUniversity of Wisconsin. Many of them had beenmulti-game starters, but every one of those seniorshad started a game.

In my entire coaching career that's never

happened. It's very unusual to have that manyguys that have played such a significant role duringtheir time already before their senior year. So it'sexciting for me because all of those seniors are inthat room because I have offered them ascholarship or allowed them an opportunity to bethere. And that's the first time I can say that sincebeing the head coach at Wisconsin. This will bemy first senior class that's come full circle.

The other thing that gets exciting isbecause of those players that we returned, andbecause of the way that we finished the season ayear ago, there's a lot of high expectations and alot of people saying nice things about us. But thething we really tried to instill since January towhere we are today the only way you canguarantee tomorrow's success is to put your workin today.

And I think our guys have really boughtinto that. I know that they've really competed wellfor our strength staff during the course of thesummer workouts. I was really excited about theway they competed during spring drills, and froman injury standpoint most of our guys should be100 percent healthy. We might have a few guysbe limited.

Mike Taylor and Chris Borland, twolinebackers that will play significant roles for us,coming off some major surgeries. They may belimited as far as double-day practices, but as far asthe opening day at camp, they're a full go. JohnClay, you'll be able to visit with him later, is ahundred percent full go, ready as well.

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August 2, 2010

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So it's an exciting time for us at Wisconsinand for the most part it should be something thatwe hold that excitement hopefully for a very longtime going into the year.

With that I'll open it up for any easyquestions.

THE MODERATOR: Questions?

Q. Question about expansion. It wouldbe -- you have two long-term rivalries withMinnesota and Iowa. How important is that tothe fabric of Wisconsin football that thosecontinue, or could it be on the wayside and it'snot a big deal to the program?

COACH BIELEMA: As all of you in thisroom, really, I haven't had much communicationabout this part of it. We just kind of get the newsas you guys report it. We might have certainmeetings advanced two, three years out where wegot to discuss things, but I did like thecommissioner's -- one of the first things he talkedabout was competitive balance but keeping therivalries intact as we currently have them and thethird part being geography.

So as a person that participated here inthe conference as a player, I know how importantthose rivalries were to you. And it jumped out tome during my first year at the University of Wisconsin, one of the traditions that Coach (Barry)Alvarez has was he would allow the seniors or theteam to pick season goals.

And that year we had a young man fromIndiana of all places, Jason Pociask, a tight end for

us. He raised his hand, and quite simply one of hissenior season goals was to beat Iowa. I'm like, if this is a kid from Indiana playing at Wisconsin andone of his season goals was to beat Iowa, thatmade a huge statement to me about the impact of that rivalry to that young man.

And I think that's the case. We have alongstanding rivalry with Iowa. And alsoMinnesota. Minnesota, one of the longest inhistory of football. That's one we'd like to keepintact.

But I think because it is a new conferenceyou're going to have new rivalries, and if you do

follow -- I tweet -- I'm not saying I'm really good atit -- but one of the first things I tweeted was if Nebraska is coming to our league, it would be neatto have them maybe as an end-season rivalrygame. Because we don't have that currently.We've kind of rotated between not only my time asa coordinator but as a head coach what our season-ending game is.

I love the Ohio State-Michigan game.Before I was playing college football I watched thatgame. It's what it is. I'd like to have tradition for ourselves, whether it's Minnesota, whether it'sIowa, whether it's Nebraska. If they come up withsomething else, I'm all game, but let's havesomething and run with it.

Hopefully you guys had a pool on whatthat first question would be. Might be a commontheme.

Q. You just mentioned now that youtweet. Can you talk to me about how that'schanged the game with how you talk to your players about allowing information out,because it's just so open?

COACH BIELEMA: It is. And it probablycame to light more so last fall for me than anything.We constantly monitor -- used to be Facebook.We have to monitor that. And making kidsunderstand and realize that anything they put outthere in their personal life or anything beyond thatis going to become public knowledge. So that wasthe -- Facebook was a warm-up for tweet.

But I think it came full circle when I kind of let it be known that during fall camp last year I wasgoing to give them an evening off. And I let themknow that a couple days in advance if guys wantedto make plans to go home. And we were in campgrinding pretty hard.

Well, by following some of our players'Twitter page, we found they were going to beattending a concert in Milwaukee, about an hour

and a half drive from Madison.So my point was to these guys, hey, if I'm

giving you time off, I don't need you out thererunning around -- I don't know what's going to goon at a concert. I had a good idea it wasn't goingto be a very good thing for a college football player to be doing.

So I kind of didn't say anything until I wasgoing to let everybody go that night. Hey, I wasreading a couple Twitter pages. How many guysare going to the concert tonight? Didn't get a lot of hands in the air. You've got to realize I have seenfive tweets where you guys are going to be

involved. That's when they caught on they neededto be careful on what I knew.But on the same side, today's world is so

different. If I have to get ahold of a kid, I don't callhim; I text him. NCAA puts several rules on whatwe can do with recruits, but it's just a much easier way of communicating, especially with kids that areso adapt and technology is their friend.


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So I don't put any parameters. I point outstupid tweets when I see one. I had a freshmanwho played no role in a game that we won lastyear early in the season, and his tweet was simply:Yeah, that's right, we did it again. I'm like, I read it,I read the author, and everybody hazed him for about the next hour, so that eliminated any stupidtexting, tweeting. But it's kind of every coach is alittle bit different.

Q. You've dealt with the highexpectations before. Do you reference thatwith the players? And do you talk about howmaybe this will have to be different this year?

COACH BIELEMA: Yeah, going back to2008, we had some high expectations. We'refortunate enough to start the year off right and raninto a little bit of a slide early on in the season. Idid like the fact that we responded. But even whenwe went 12-1 my first year, I guess 2006, I veryseldom ever referenced that season again with our guys because what's history is history. We alllearn from it we can read about it but it doesnothing to affect the future.

I do like the fact that our kids, the majorityof our players that are going to be significantplayers in this year's senior class, all went throughthe scars of that season themselves in addition tomyself and several of my coaching staff.

So, yeah, we'll make note of any mistakesthat were made that year. But, again, the 2010season is based on the individuals that are in thatroom and we'll just kind of move ourselves forward.

Q. When you get together with other coaches this week, is the first topic: Will therebe more expansion or how the divisions aregoing to be drawn up or something else?

COACH BIELEMA: You know what? I raninto Fitz. I haven't ran into many other coaches. Idon't think so. When you come into this meeting,as coaches, you're going to be locked -- we cometo camp next Sunday, and I think everybody in thisroom, unless somebody else has some meetingsthat I'm not aware of, they don't ask us.

At least they don't ask me. Maybe that's

just a personal thing. But they're going to makethose decisions and move themselves forward. Ilove just the excitement of trying to find things outand figure it out. I haven't really spent a lot of timeassessing what I think it's going to be.

It's more how it's going to affect us. I lovethe expansion of Nebraska for one reason: To me,it opens up more recruiting possibilities to the west.

And in addition to the ability to recruit more into theMinnesota and Dakotas and Nebraska itself, itmight open up more channels to the West.

And also just brings the value of our league. You add Nebraska -- I grew up in an eraand an age where it was always on TV andsomebody was always playing in a championshipgame. And, you know, personally, for me, it justbrings so much value to our conference that youcan't buy anything like that.

Q. Heading into the last three seasons,you faced a lot of uncertainty at thequarterback position. What's it like this year having a veteran coming back and coming off areally good year?

COACH BIELEMA: It's very -- as a headcoach it's an unbelievable feeling to know thatanswer's already there. And to have that answer be Scott Tolzien, for any of you that's interviewedScotty, he's a perfectionist, he's a detail guy. Ithink as a person he's really grown even from ayear ago to where we are today so much.

He's got unbelievable confidence. Hispersonality. I do believe one of the things that hereally struggled with a year ago he was sosuccessful in high school, academically andathletically he never had experienced failure. Henever experienced anything that kind of was abump in the road.

When we had a couple of those it reallytook him back. And he's really done a good job of observing. I thought the best quote I saw him from

out of season was somebody asked him aboutwhat he learned during the winter film studies, andhe said: I'm just finally happy that the guy on filmis me.

I thought that was an interestingperspective, because he's speaking the truth. Hegot to watch himself perform in the pressures thatwere involved, and hopefully it's made him a better player.

Q. Any thoughts of adding aconference championship game? And whatare the positives and negatives of having a

permanent location for that game?COACH BIELEMA: You know, myself,before I went to the Big 12 conference I had beena player in this league. You only know what youknow. And a lot of times coaches brainwash kids,I'm not saying I do, but a lot of people do. And oneof the things you really felt is you had a certain way


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of doing things in the conference that was the bestway to do it.

And then when I went to the Big 12conference and had an opportunity to play in theBig 12 championship game, earn a BCS berthbecause we beat Oklahoma who was the No. 1team in the country, it gave us an opportunity toget into that BCS game, play your way into it. Itwas an exciting time in our program not just thegame itself but the two weeks leading into it, thebuildup of trying to get to that game.

We lost two games early on in the fallseason that we felt the only way we could get to aBCS game was to get to the Big 12 championshipgame and then beat the Southern opponent, whichwe did.

I was very excited, but I distinctlyremember coming into this conference -- I can'tbelieve it's five years now -- as a head coach. AndI remember the first time we talked aboutchampionship games and if it was something wereally wanted to have. And the coaching guardwas a little bit different then.

Coach Lloyd Carr was the head coach of Michigan and he had traditionally been a Michiganway of thinking and the way that it had alwaysbeen. Of course, the longstanding programs kindof always -- but one of the people that really likedthe championship game idea was myself andCoach (Ron) Zook, because we'd both beeninvolved in it in different conferences.

I'm in favor of it. I don't know where it'sgoing to go. But for me personally I think it would

be a very exciting thing.

Q. I wanted to ask you, is it true thatyou've approached league officials aboutpossibly playing Nebraska in the league finaleevery season?

COACH BIELEMA: Well, again, that wasthe use of the Twitter generation. And one of thethings that I tweeted -- actually, we tried toschedule Nebraska two years ago. It was CoachAlvarez, because of his history and tradition of playing at Nebraska, thought it would be a neatcross-over game for us. We were trying to get a

home and home as a nonconference schedule,and it really excited me. I know Bo (Pelini) wasactually the GA when I was a player at Iowa, soCoach Pelini and I have a little bit of history andshared a common group of friends.

Then when this came to life, when it wastrue that we were going to be adding Nebraska, Itweeted it right away and I followed it up with a text

to Mark Rudner and asked for that to be taken intoconsideration. I'm sure he was inundated and tookfive seconds to delete the text, but it wassomething I felt strongly about. And I thought itwould be neat. So that's all there is to it.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach.

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