Barry Alvarez has a difficult task ahead of him. Wisconsin’s football team has sagged the past three years and likely heads into another season of growing pains in 2003.

Those are challenges UW’s 14-year head coach has seen in the past and overcome successfully — without coordinating an entire athletic department. But, after the university named Alvarez successor to Pat Richter, with every sign he will continue coaching football, that is exactly the balancing act he will be expected to perform when Richter finally steps down in April 2004.

Similar arrangements are not unprecedented, even at UW (most recently 1955). But these days, the world of Division I athletics — and especially big-time college football — is much different than when coaches routinely administered locker rooms and front offices and everything in between.

Many great coaches have retired and gone on to greater success as athletic directors (see: Vince Dooley, Georgia). UNLV’s John Robinson has never matched the heights he did when coaching exclusively football at Southern California and he is the only active head coach, out of more than 100 Division I schools, who also runs the athletic department.

There is a reason for that. Recently, professional coaches who double as general managers are vogue (mostly because the coaches control the market; it’s not necessarily the best for the teams). But pro GMs only manage one team, contrasted with 23 varsity sports at UW, and college coaches already have more on their plate administering extensive recruiting programs.

Pat Richter did a splendid job resuscitating Wisconsin’s sporting tradition. A former basketball and football All-American, he pumped resources into those revenue sports that turned into yields across the department. With those teams now annually entrenched in postseason competition, it would be a perfect time to develop blooming non-revenue sports like soccer and volleyball or invest financial and gender-equity resources into bringing baseball back.

Instead the Alvarez move signals even more emphasis on football. “I’m really looking forward to meeting all of the coaches in the department,” Alvarez said, which is hardly encouraging. He also said he plans to lean heavily on an administrative assistant to take care of non-football matters for him.

Why not use Richter’s ample forward notice to seek out a top-notch administrative director who can take the whole department further while Alvarez concentrates on bringing the football team back? Barry Alvarez will probably be a fine athletic director someday, but isn’t his job tough enough already?