BY MIKE LUCAS
UWBadgers.com Senior Writer
This article has 3 parts: 1 - Joe Panos | 2 - Michael Roan | 3 - Yusef Burgess
MADISON, Wis. — As a former high school football head coach and current athletics director, Michael Roan has often applied what he learned during his playing days as a Wisconsin tight end.
Over the years, the lessons have aged like a fine wine. Roan certainly knows something about the latter. He has his own vineyard in Sonoma's wine country.
Roan was more than happy to update his mailing address — "I'm living right here in the midst of grape vines" — 25 years removed from earning first-team All-Big Ten honors after catching 34 passes, more than half of which picked up first downs, during the historic championship run in 1993.
After a six-year NFL career with the Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans, Roan and his wife Amber, who's from the San Francisco east bay area, moved to Sebastopol in northern California, where he got a job coaching junior varsity football at El Molino High School in Forestville.
"I reflected on the person I had become, how I got to the point that I was, and all the things I was blessed with," he said. "It really came back to the coaches, teachers and mentors I had growing up and the lessons they had taught me. Not to get too sappy but it's a true story. I wanted to pay it back."
Thus, he had no reservations about taking such a low-entry JV post. Within three years, he completed his master's at the University of San Francisco, got his teaching certificate and was named El Molino's head coach, a position that he held for six seasons before taking over as athletic director.
"All the lessons you learn being a college athlete," said Roan, an Iowa City, Iowa native, "from managing your time to struggling through adversity, specifically understanding the hard work it took to turn something around and see that come to fruition, is something I've taken with me.
"I've been involved in athletics my whole life and those are lessons that I relay every day; multiple times a day. Staying the course. Putting in the hard work. Commitment. And when your opportunity comes, taking advantage of it … all the things that Coach talked about."
Hall of Fame coach Barry Alvarez was the architect of Wisconsin's football renaissance.
"Whether he was giving us a pregame talk or a post-practice message," Roan said, "you took it to heart and you remembered those daily lessons — don't flinch in the moment; don't get too high or too low — because they were real, and they applied, and they stick with you because they're relevant."
Roan has stayed in touch with some UW teammates: Mike Verstegen, Korey Manley, Jeff Messenger, Vince Zullo, Scott Nelson, among others. They try to get together at least once a year. Roan still has his 1994 Rose Bowl ring, a couple of autographed footballs and some framed pictures.
Along with all those memories, of course.
"As the ('93) season went on, losing to Minnesota was a setback," Roan recalled. "But coming back that next week and beating a pretty good Michigan team for the first time in a while was a pretty key point in that season for staying on course for what we wanted to do."
That Michigan game will forever be marked by the surge in the student section, the Camp Randall Stampede. In the closing seconds, hundreds were trapped or trampled from the force of the surge at the northeast end of the stadium, primarily Sections O, P and Q.
The cascading force was a human tidal wave so powerful that an iron railing at the base of the stands was lifted from its concrete moorings, leaving bodies piled one on top of another, four and five deep. Many players came to the rescue of their fellow students. Miraculously, no one was killed.
"I remember Joe Panos (an All-Big Ten offensive tackle) coming into the locker literally thinking that people were dying out there," Roan said. "There was just such a range of emotions that you felt. It was not a great memory, but it was a lasting memory."
The following week, Wisconsin played to a 14-14 tie with Ohio State, a marquee battle of "big on big" that drew noteworthy national attention to Madison and Alvarez's revival of a once moribund program. A week later, the Badgers capped the "mainland" regular season by winning at Illinois.
"That Illinois game still sticks out in my mind," Roan said. "They had a top-ranked defense at the time and they weren't allowing much rushing — and that was kind of the point of the year when we were hanging our hat on that. I still kind of get a tingling feeling about things we were able to do."
To get to the Rose Bowl, the Badgers still had to beat Michigan State. But they had to do so in a "home" game staged in Tokyo, Japan; a little over 6,000 miles from Camp Randall Stadium. Despite the logistical challenges, the better team won, just as Alvarez had assured his players would happen.
"My greatest memories from that whole week in Japan," Roan said, "was celebrating after the game at the team hotel with my roommates and friends — realizing what we had just done. It was a memory that I will never forget."
Alvarez had no other option but to thrust young, inexperienced players into the lineup earlier than they might have been ready to play in more established, winning programs. In 1991, Roan started eight games at tight end; Verstegen started the final six at left tackle. Both were redshirt freshman.
Two seasons later, they were ready to harvest.
Just like grapes.
"I've got five acres in Sonoma County," Roan said. "Two acres of Pinot Noir."
His Green Valley vineyard is 12 miles from the Pacific Ocean in the Russian River Valley.
"The vineyard is about 10 years old now — it takes two to three years to get a harvestable crop," he said. "We sell to some local wine makers who buy our grapes. This year, we're producing a single vineyard, which means we're going to put 'Roan Family Vineyard' on the bottle and sell it."
The connection between Mike and Amber Roan and Bobby and Shannon Donnell — the "Screen Door Cellars" winemakers — were their kids. They met in school and a friendship developed. The Roan Family Pinot has since got a favorable review and score (96) from a Sonoma newsletter and blogger.
Wrote the reviewer, The Prince of Pinot, "Enchanting aromas of red cherry and sandalwood lead to a very charming wine that exudes pinotosity … I was tasting eight Pinot Noirs and this wine was tested at the end. It immediately made me sit up in my chair, stare at the glass and smile."
Smile is what Roan did when thinking about coming back to campus. "I lived in the Lake Shore dorms and I want to walk the Lake Shore path and try to freshen up some memories."
Read Part 1 - Joe Panos, Tackle: 'Our legacy is that we started the run and we started it the right way'
Read Part 3 - Yusef Burgess, Linebacker: 'Lunch pail mentality' still a Badgers core value
