Wisconsins first bowl win, 40 years ago: How an Independence Bowl left a legacy

As head coach Dave McClain addressed his Wisconsin football players in the lead-up to the 1982 Independence Bowl, he reached into the program’s past for motivation. He reminded the team that the postseason game Badgers fans remembered most and still discussed had occurred in the Rose Bowl 20 years earlier — a game No. 2 Wisconsin lost 42-37 to No. 1 USC.

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McClain was well aware that Wisconsin had never before won a bowl game, having lost all four of its previous matchups. So, he laid out the facts and presented his big talking point: Here is an opportunity to do something at Wisconsin that hasn’t been done. Here is your chance to go make history.

“That was in the back of our minds the whole time,” said Gary Ellerson, a running back at Wisconsin from 1981-84.

Wisconsin will play in its 21st consecutive bowl game — the third-longest active streak in the FBS — when it takes on Oklahoma State in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl on Dec. 27. Bowl games have become expected and somewhat taken for granted for the Badgers, who have been to 28 bowls in the past 30 years with 17 victories and three Rose Bowl wins under Barry Alvarez.

But, 40 years ago this week, a team successfully met McClain’s challenge by overcoming atrocious weather conditions to stamp itself as an important piece of program lore with a 14-3 victory against Kansas State. An early-December bowl win on a cold night in Shreveport, La., was a big deal. And, all these years later, it still is to the participants, given what it meant.

“It was incredibly impactful,” said Darryl Sims, who played defensive end for the Badgers. “I’m on a text thread with a whole bunch of guys and we reflect back on those kinds of moments. Those can never be taken away.”

The seeds for that triumph began one year earlier under McClain when Wisconsin won seven games and was invited to play Tennessee in the Garden State Bowl — the Badgers’ first bowl game appearance since the 1963 Rose Bowl. Tennessee edged Wisconsin 28-21, and Sims recalled that players returned for offseason workouts days later with a renewed hunger to help build the program into a consistent winner.

By the time preseason practices began in August, the Badgers believed they had the talent to reach consecutive bowl games for the first time in school history.

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“Anytime you go into training camp, you’ve just got to have an ‘it factor,’ meaning if positions are good all the way through the team: offense, defense and special teams,” nose tackle Tim Krumrie said. “And we were consistent all the way across.”

Wisconsin opened the 1982 season with back-to-back losses to No. 12 Michigan (20-9) and No. 14 UCLA (51-26). But the Badgers reeled off four victories in a row, most notably a 6-0 shutout at Ohio State — Wisconsin’s second win against Ohio State in a row but its first in Columbus since 1918. A 1-yard touchdown run from tailback John Williams during the first quarter held up the rest of the way.

“When we were in the locker room, guys said to each other, ‘We’re a pretty damn good football team defensively,’” Sims said. “‘We think we’ve got the right guys, we’ve got the right scheme and we’ve got the right mindset to really do something special.’”

Wisconsin’s season teetered with three losses in four games, including back-to-back Big Ten defeats to Indiana and Iowa. The Badgers were sitting at 5-5 entering their regular-season finale at home against rival Minnesota. Quarterback Randy Wright said he asked McClain the night before the game about Wisconsin’s bowl chances.

Wright recalled McClain telling him that if the Badgers won, they would be in. Wisconsin then hammered Minnesota 24-0 and was invited to play in the Independence Bowl against Kansas State (6-4-1) on Dec. 11. It marked the first of 16 bowl games that season and became the first live college football game broadcast by ESPN. It was also the first bowl appearance in Kansas State history.

McClain’s plan when the team arrived in Louisiana was to work players hard — including a physical two-hour practice three days before the game — and then taper off the intensity. He expressed confidence Wisconsin would be less uptight than it was for its bowl game one year earlier. As kickoff approached, it became clear Wisconsin would have to deal with more than just being mentally and physically prepared for Kansas State; it would have to battle the elements.

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“It was a frickin’ mud bowl,” Sims said. “Tim Krumrie and I were playing next to each other quite a bit. I just remember I’d look over at him and he was completely covered. I was 60 and he was 50 and you couldn’t tell the difference.”

The game-time temperature was listed at 32 degrees, but freezing rain pelted the field all night, and 23 mile-per-hour wind gusts reduced the wind-chill factor to 10 degrees. Although more than 49,000 tickets had been sold, only 24,684 fans showed up for the game. Ellerson said McClain’s pep talk focused on getting players to believe that this was the type of weather Wisconsin thrived in during Big Ten play.

“I think those were the worst conditions we had,” Krumrie said. “We had some bad ones. But I just remember the field was all torn up. We went out on the field for warmups. Everybody is sliding around. So I put on longer cleats and widened my base. They called it a mudder. It was like you took two showers when you finished.”

Kansas State seized a 3-0 second-quarter lead on Steve Willis’ 29-yard field goal after Ellerson lost a fumble at his team’s own 18. But Wisconsin established a 7-3 halftime advantage on the next series when Wright dropped back from under center on third-and-10 and threw over the middle into the end zone, where receiver Michael Jones made a diving 16-yard touchdown catch. Jones dropped the ball as he hit the ground, but officials ruled that he held onto it long enough.

Wright described the throwing conditions with a slick, muddy ball as “pretty terrible,” and he completed just 9-of-24 passes in the game. However, he delivered two critical throws, first to Jones and then midway through the third quarter to tight end Tim Stracka to help seal the game.

On first-and-10 from Wisconsin’s own 13-yard line, Wright took a three-step drop and passed to Stracka on the right hash at the 24-yard line. Stracka shed two tackles immediately and broke free for an 87-yard touchdown catch, which was the longest pass play in Wisconsin and Independence Bowl history. Wright said both touchdowns were the result of him audibling into a different play at the line of scrimmage based on the defense he saw from Kansas State.

“At the time, I got a lot of credit for, ‘Wow, you threw this 87-yard touchdown pass and this is a school record,’” Wright said. “I think I threw the ball 12 yards. Tim ran. He broke a tackle and then he ran 75 yards or whatever it was. It was one of those things where you get a lot of praise and a lot of congratulations for a pretty simple play that the receiver turned into a great play.”

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Three years earlier, McClain had convinced Wright to take a chance on Wisconsin as a transfer from Notre Dame, selling him on a vision to be the first to lead the program to new heights. Wright made good on that conversation and earned offensive most valuable player honors in the game.

Wisconsin’s defense, meanwhile, took care of the rest. Two Kansas State drives deep into Wisconsin territory ended with no points. Badgers safety Matt Vanden Boom intercepted a pass in the end zone. Later, cornerback Brian Marrow broke up a fourth-down pass from the 26-yard line in the front right corner of the end zone.

Kansas State quarterback Darrell Dickey, whose father, Jim, was the head coach, completed 13-of-35 passes for 127 yards with an interception. The Wildcats ran the ball 33 times for just 65 yards. Krumrie recorded 13 tackles and a pass breakup to earn the defensive MVP award in a sloppy game that featured five turnovers (four lost fumbles), 14 punts and 14 penalties.

“You really have to keep control of your core and what’s underneath you, keep your feet underneath you,” Krumrie said. “That’s important in conditions like that. I always call it you’ve got Clydesdales and you have race horses. We were Clydesdales. That’s why we won. Because they couldn’t cut. A running back can’t cut in mud.”

After the game, McClain stood on a bench in the team locker room, his voice hoarse, and told players they didn’t have to steal their new red jerseys with Independence Bowl patches on the shoulders because they could keep them as a token of their accomplishment. McClain had preached to all his players the idea of building a program and being a part of something bigger than themselves. In that moment, his goal had come to fruition, and he praised them for developing a tradition at Wisconsin.

McClain coached for three more seasons before he died of a heart attack at age 48 in April 1986 after working out on an exercise bicycle at Camp Randall Stadium and collapsing in a sauna. Over eight seasons at Wisconsin, his teams beat No. 1 Michigan in 1981, defeated Ohio State four times and reached a bowl game in three of his final five seasons as he compiled a 46-42-3 record. The Independence Bowl victory represented his lone postseason win and served as one of the crowning achievements for the program during his tenure — something his players continue to take pride in 40 years later.

“I think Dave McClain teams kind of got overshadowed a little bit by the Barry Alvarez teams,” Ellerson said. “A lot of people forgot the come up of how the team was really getting good under Coach McClain, recruiting good players. Then of course he passed away and that momentum fell by the wayside until Barry eventually was hired.

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“But looking back on that, I do tell a lot of the Barry guys, ‘Just so you guys know, we were the first team to ever win a bowl game there.’ They go, ‘What bowl game was that?’ I go, ‘The Independence Bowl.’ They go, ‘Man, we go to Rose Bowls.’ It’s kind of funny. We give each other crap a little bit about it. But for the program at that time, had coach McClain stayed alive, I think we were going to be doing great things with the guys that he was recruiting.”

(Photo of Dave McClain: Mark Humphrey / AP)

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