BY ANDY BAGGOT
UWBadgers.com Insider
MADISON, Wis. — In the last 51 weeks, Wisconsin football coach Paul Chryst has lost three assistant coaches to grander opportunities.
Justin Wilcox has gone from being UW defensive coordinator to being the head coach at California.
Tim Tibesar has gone from tutoring outside linebackers for the Badgers to being the defensive coordinator at Oregon State.
Al Johnson has gone from being a graduate assistant at his alma mater, working with the offensive line, to being the head coach at NCAA Division II East Central (Oklahoma) State.
All three left with high hopes and mixed feelings. They expressly loved their time in Madison. They left on the high note of a bowl victory that finished off a season of double-digit wins.
Wilcox, Tibesar and Johnson left the Badgers in better stead than when they arrived — Wilcox after one season, Johnson after two and Tibesar after three — but they also were better for the experience of coaching at Wisconsin.
Asked what piece of the program they most want to replicate in their next coaching life, the three identified the same thing.
"The culture is very unique and awesome to be around," Tibesar said.
"I believe culture is what wins in the long run and that's why I believe Wisconsin has won so many games — because of the culture," Johnson said.
The Badgers are fresh off a record-setting season — a 13-1 overall record and a 34-24 victory over Miami in the Orange Bowl — that enhanced their place among the elite in the Football Bowl Subdivision.
UW is 101-34 (.748) since 2008, joining Alabama, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Clemson, Florida State and Oregon as the only Power Five schools to win at least 100 games in the last 10 seasons.
Wisconsin has won four straight bowl games, one of the prime legacies of a senior class that registered a program-record 45 victories over a four-year period starting in 2014.
So how do you define the culture at UW?
"Humble and hard-working," Tibesar said. "That sums it up for me.
"These guys come to work every day and want to get better. They're willing to do whatever you ask them to do as a coach, and you can't ask for anything more. They're fun to be around that way.
"It's a coaches' dream. They'll run through a brick wall for you. It's important to them and it is fun to coach at a place like that."
Wilcox traveled a similar descriptive path.
"Geez, there's a lot of words that I could use that people talk about that (people) live by out there," he said. "You talk about accountability and work ethic and toughness. Those jump out at me.
"The players, that locker room, the people involved with the program, everybody's on the same page and they all embody what the program stands for. It's really impressive to see first-hand. It's something that impacted me a great deal in a short time."
Before coming to Madison for the 2016 season, Wilcox was an assistant coach at some highly-regarded college football schools, including Southern California, Washington, Tennessee and Boise State.
When Wilcox took the job at Cal last Jan. 14, he said he had a list of Wisconsin-centric things he wanted to bring to his first head coaching assignment.
"There's a lot of things, but it always starts with the team," he said. "The team has to come first. It's not about an individual coach. It's not about individual players. It's always going to be about the team."
The Bears finished 5-7 overall in the Pac-12 Conference despite a rash of key injuries.
"We're not there yet," Wilcox said, "but we're better than we were eight months ago in understanding it, the humility it takes to put the team before yourself."
What are the expectations at UW? The answers might surprise you because the list doesn't start with winning.
"To me it's 'Do what you say you're going to do; do your job with humility and effort,'" Wilcox said. "You earn respect through your actions and not what you say. It's how you treat people. It's how you live.
"The expectation is that you do things the right way. Everyone in the program understands what the right way is. They know what the standard is and they hold each other accountable to it."
Johnson, from Brussels, Wisconsin, was an award-winning starter at center for the Badgers from 2000 to '02 before carving out a seven-year career in the NFL with Dallas, Arizona, Miami and New England. He was a senior when UW began its current school-record streak of 16 consecutive bowl appearances.
"If your only expectation is to win, it's going to be a really shallow year," he said. "If that's your goal, you're not going to win on a consistent, year-to-year basis."
The expectation at UW, Johnson said, is more fluid.
"It's to be better every day, to go out and work hard," he said. "Can I get better every week and can I peak at the right time?
"At the end of the day, if it's real, the players will see that. I think that's another big reason why we have success. Coach Chryst is himself, so it's real."
Chryst is a former UW player, assistant coach and coordinator who took over as head coach in 2015 after a three-year stint at Pitt. He's 34-7 overall since then, including a 22-4 mark in the Big Ten Conference, and was voted the league's coach of the year for the second straight season.
"There's a lot of really good football coaches out there that can do X's and O's, but I'm not sure that there's a better combination of a person that's that good of a football coach," Wilcox said of Chryst.
"When you talk about humble and hard-working and accountable and smart and tough, that is who he is and that's who Wisconsin is."
Johnson said Chryst's strength is his genuine, consistent, personable approach to running his program.
"Too many times we turn on the TV and see coaches trying to be what they think they need to be for recruiting," Johnson said. "Coach is very secure with who he is. If you're just you, the players will see that. But if you're phony, they'll see that, too."
Johnson said Chryst is not a complicated man to work for.
"You know what's expected of you; you know your job," Johnson said.
"I don't think the buck gets passed around here very much. If it's your mistake, then you own it and you learn from it and you don't make it again. It's the same on the football field, in the offices and just in general.
"That's a very important factor in who we are and why we win. Everybody knows their job and they do their job to the best of their ability."
Johnson officially started his new job at the Ada, Oklahoma, campus on Jan. 2, but spent a week recently calling all his players, answering their questions and easing their minds. He said the main objective, outside of moving his wife Brandy and four young children to new digs, is to create a culture of unity like the one he's experienced at UW.
"How I take it, and how I'm going to instill it in my program, is a family," he said. "Where things aren't always perfect, but we're in this together.
"We're always working to be better individually and as a team and we're doing it together."
Tibesar has worked under three defensive coordinators at Wisconsin — Dave Aranda, Wilcox and now Jim Leonhard — and developed some elite outside linebackers in that time. That list includes Joe Schobert, currently one of the top tacklers in the NFL with Cleveland; T.J. Watt, a first-round NFL draft pick with Pittsburgh; and Vince Biegel, who was chosen in the fourth round of the NFL draft by Green Bay.
Tibesar has been a defensive coordinator before — at North Dakota, Kansas State and Purdue — but he's hoping this opportunity with Oregon State will help translate into a head coaching post.
"You can't say it enough: I love that humble and hard-working approach," he said of the UW way. "If I get a chance to be a head coach, I'd love to be part of a culture like that."
Tibesar said it's helped him immensely to be around a group of players and coaches that have the same objectives.
"The players here are something special," he said. "The culture is very unique and awesome to be around.
"I've learned a ton of X's and O's, but also learned from seeing how this program is run and how the players have bought in."
Wilcox said the current UW culture has roots back to 1990 when Barry Alvarez took over and began a Hall of Fame coaching career. He won 119 games from '90 to 2005, including three Big Ten titles and three Rose Bowls, before becoming Wisconsin's director of athletics.
Wilcox, who grew up on the West Coast and graduated from Oregon, was asked to identify the difference between UW and other places he's seen.
"It's a beautiful place — Camp Randall Stadium and all that is great — but it's the people in the program that are just really special," he said.
Wilcox said freshmen see things done a certain way so that when they're seniors, they're ready to uphold the current standard of excellence.
"Obviously there's winning," he said, "but winning's a by-product of the rest of the operation.
"If there's one thing, it's the people in the program. Wisconsin is the best example of that."
Johnson said the foundation of success with the Badgers is built on an uncomplicated premise.
"Just be you," he said. "Just be the good you.
"It sounds so simple, but it really resonates with people and players and kids."
Johnson embarks upon his head coaching career with that mental blueprint in mind.
"Obviously there's the X's and O's things, but other than that, those are the two main things," he said. "If I can take them and hold onto them for all my coaching career, I will be a better person and a better father and a better coach."
