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Barry Alvarez again critical of Wisconsin Badgers fans wanting to fire Chris McIntosh and Luke Fickell

Lorin Cox|
Retiring UW athletic director Barry Alvarez is shown during a ceremony honoring his tenure at the Kohl Center Tuesday, April 6, 2021, in Madison, Wis. Alvarez was head football coach for 15 years and athletic director for 18 years.
Retiring UW athletic director Barry Alvarez is shown during a ceremony honoring his tenure at the Kohl Center Tuesday, April 6, 2021, in Madison, Wis. Alvarez was head football coach for 15 years and athletic director for 18 years. | Mark Hoffman / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel via Imagn Content Services, LLC

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Wisconsin Badgers

Former Wisconsin Badgers head coach and athletic director Barry Alvarez continues to clash with the fan base that has long adored him.

He has called out fan behavior already this season on his weekly radio show for ESPN Madison, and he did it again on Tuesday morning.

Alvarez is tired of fans calling for the program to fire athletic director Chris McIntosh and head coach Luke Fickell, and he thinks it's foolish for fans to always be looking to clean house.

"It's the easy thing to do. If you've never played, if you've never coached, the first thing you do [when] things go south a little bit [is] fire everybody. Then what the hell are you going to do? You're going to bring some knuckleheads in here that don't know anything about anything, and you start all over again. Then you're worse than where you started."
Barry Alvarez, on ESPN Madison

Related: Wisconsin athletic director stands by Luke Fickell, promises more investment in football

It's fair for Alvarez to note that being quick to fire coaches and athletic directors can lead to organizational instability, and he knows how important it was for the program to be patient with him when his Badgers teams struggled early on.

On the other hand, if the current leadership in place isn't capable of turning things around, then the sooner they are fired, the sooner things can improve.

Wisconsin hasn't beaten a Power 4 conference opponent in a full calendar year. That's far below the standard that Badgers fans have come to expect.

They're going to demand more until they start to see more on the field. The more this team struggles, the more that firing everybody looks like a necessary evil, even if that risks moving backward before the team moves forward again.

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Lorin Cox
LORIN COX

Lorin Cox is the managing editor of Wisconsin Badgers on SI. He has been covering Badgers sports since 2014, when he was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin. He previously wrote for the Wisconsin State Journal, NBC Sports Chicago and USA Today Sports Media Group, and he is a former analyst for Pro Football Focus.

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