Fansided

Wisconsin basketball players coaching in football Spring Game

By Will Osgood

Apr 6, 2015; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Wisconsin Badgers forward Frank Kaminsky (44) reacts after a basket against the Duke Blue Devils in the first half in the 2015 NCAA Men
Apr 6, 2015; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Wisconsin Badgers forward Frank Kaminsky (44) reacts after a basket against the Duke Blue Devils in the first half in the 2015 NCAA Men /
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Some of the Wisconsin basketball players are coaching the Badgers’ Spring football game 

It appears basketball fever has even hit the football program in Madison, Wisconsin.

Two senior basketball players–Josh Gasser and Duje Dukan–will be honorary coaches in the Badgers’ Spring football game on Saturday afternoon, first announced on April 22 on the school’s football Twitter feed.

The Badgers are entering their first season under new head coach Paul Chryst, who came over to the program after three seasons at Pittsburgh, where he went 19-19.

Chryst had the opportunity, if he had wanted it, to take the head coaching job two offseasons ago when Brett Bielema left the program to take the same job at the University of Arkansas.

However, he had just taken the Pittsburgh job one year earlier and didn’t feel it was fair to his new employer to be another one-and-done coach after he took over for Todd Graham, who spent just one season at Pittsburgh before taking the Arizona State job.

Chryst, of course, went to Pittsburgh after an extremely successful seven-year run as the Badgers’ offensive coordinator under great Badgers coach Barry Alvarez and Bielema.

But the job was too tempting when Gary Andersen left the program to take the head coaching job at Oregon State after just two seasons in Madison.

Chryst understands all the dynamics at hand in Madison, and so the move to name two members of the Badgers’ championship game team as honorary Spring game coaches made sense.

Fans in the Wisconsin area love their team, creating a wonderfully frightful home field advantage and traveling quite well for road games. This is not a move to create interest in the program.

It was a move to reward the two seniors and please the Badgers fans and create further unity between the school’s two most prominent athletic programs.

But that didn’t stop the football program from taking an additional step to further hype the event.

The move, though, is not terribly unique, as several smaller programs have recently made the habit of auctioning off the opportunity to be an honorary coach for the Spring Game, in order to raise funds for their under-funded programs.

Other larger schools have made moves such as this one to honor famous alumni and donors.

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