Lucas at 50: Party like its 1999
November 08, 2019 | Football, Mike Lucas
Remembering one of Badgers’ greatest games against Iowa
UWBadgers.com Senior Writer Mike Lucas is celebrating 50 years of covering the Badgers in 2019. Join us throughout the season as we take a look back at some of the most memorable moments from his career in Madison. This week's lookback also celebrates Ron Dayne's role in the Badgers' dream season of 1999-2000.
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BY MIKE LUCAS
UWBadgers.com Senior Writer
Adamov. Anelli. Bollinger. Braun. Bryant. Burke. Burlingame. Carpenter. Chambers. Costa. Davenport. Davis. Dayne. Doering. Downing. Dox. Echols. Favret. Ferrario. Fritz. Ghidorzi. Gibson. Gill. Grams. Gribowski. Habermann. Hunt. Johnson. Jowers. King. Kolodziej. Kuhns. Lamont. Lee. LIsowski. Mahlik. Marks. Martin. McIntosh. Merritt. Mialik. Mueller. Munden. Myers. Pisetsky. Rabach. Retzlaff. Roell. Rosga. Samuel. Schick. Schneck. Shonkwiler. Sigmund. Simmons. Skrzypchak. Sprague. Stemke. Tauscher. Thompson. Tucker. Unertl. Wagner. Waisanen.
They're all coming back to Madison this weekend for a reunion of the 1998 and 1999 teams that won Big Ten championships and back-to-back Rose Bowls, making Big Ten history.
November 13, 1999
A commemorative white towel — Dayne 33 — bearing Ron Dayne's No. 33 and a congratulatory message was handed out to every fan entering Camp Randall Stadium.
Just before the 2:36 p.m. kickoff, four F-16 jets from the Wisconsin Air National Guard's 115th Fighter Wing provided a fly-by salute to America's veterans.
By 5 p.m., the temperature would climb to 69 degrees. It was positively balmy for this time of the year when the normal high was 45.
How hot was it? It was so hot that it prompted one person to disrobe. The "Dayne Game Streaker" stripped down to his running shoes and socks. Tim Condon wore a red bandana and "33" on his chest.
VIDEO: Camp Randall 100: Dayne Game Streaker
Making the setting even more surreal was the fact that Michigan's 31-27 victory over Penn State had put the Badgers in a position to lock up an outright Big Ten championship.
"It's still the greatest atmosphere and greatest energy I've ever seen or been a part of in a stadium," said quarterback Brooks Bollinger, "and I don't think second place is even close."
Want to feel old? Next week, Bollinger will celebrate his 40th birthday.
But he still says nothing can match that Camp Randall celebration from 20 years ago.
November 13, 1999.
"I remember on top of the atmosphere, it was as much fun as I've ever had playing quarterback," Bollinger said. "I felt so good, confident and comfortable with everything we were doing.
"And when you walked out there, you thought, 'Wow, this is unbelievable.' You felt it right away and with every play and with every minute, and it just kept getting better and better."
Bret Bielema was then the linebackers coach for first-year Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz.
"For the first time in my coaching career, I felt like the crowd was an extra player on the field," said Bielema, who would later take the Badgers to three straight Rose Bowls as the UW head coach.
"It was overwhelming, the sheer volume of the noise and the interaction between the fans and the players. That was really college football at its finest."
Bielema couldn't get one voice out of his head — the mellifluous voice of Mike Mahnke, the PA announcer at Camp Randall Stadium, a job that he has held since 1995.
With his lyrical call, Mahnke turned each of Dayne's runs into a celebration and singalong.
"The next day, we're back in Iowa City," Bielema said, "and we're all saying 'Roooon Daaayne.'"
As the oversized, bulldozing Dayne grew in popularity and stature, so did Mahnke and his "Roooon Daaayne" to the point where the students began echoing the call.
Mahnke had his own guidelines.
"If he got 10-plus yards on a run, I'd usually give it a little bit of a goose," he said. "And if he rumbled for a touchdown, then it would be peel-me-off-the-ceiling time."
November 13, 1999.
Peel-me-off-the-ceiling-time.
Bielema had watched a ton of tape on Dayne before the trip to Madison.
"What we wanted to do was overwhelm him at the point of attack," he said. "You had to swarm tackle and basically put more numbers on him than he could handle. With the record on the line, we knew that he was going to be featured. But, at the time, our horses didn't add up to their horses."
Ah, yes, the record. Ricky Williams' career rushing record. Dayne needed 99 yards to break it.
"I didn't have any idea, in terms of plays, how the record would fall," Dayne said. "But I was confident prior to the game that it WOULD fall.
"What I do remember is in the second quarter, as I was nearing the record, Chad Kuhns said, 'You know, you can't break the record without me being in there.'"
Not only was Kuhns, the UW fullback, on the field, he threw a key block.
With 4 minutes and 32 seconds left in the first half, Bollinger got the signal from the sideline, stepped into the huddle and called, "23 Zone."
Dayne's eyes widened.
"I felt like Coach White had read my mind when he chose that play," Dayne said of Brian White, the offensive coordinator. "I also remember the look that Chad Kuhns gave me in the huddle.
"I think he knew, if he did his job, I would do mine. And I have always had nothing but confidence in my offensive line."
It all started with the horses (read: Bielema reference): the O-line.
Chris McIntosh and Mark Tauscher were the tackles, Bill Ferrario and Dave Costa were the guards, Casey Rabach was the center, and Dague Retzlaff and John Sigmund were the tight ends.
"We had a game plan, we had experienced linemen and we were going to tweak the running plays — the outside runs and the hard dive inside — that Ron liked," said offensive line coach Jim Hueber.
23 Zone.
Rabach fired out on Corey Brown. Costa slid off Brown and blocked linebacker Aaron Kampman. Tauscher locked up the defensive end Anthony Herron and Kuhns kicked out on linebacker Fred Barr.
In the backfield, Dayne took the handoff from Bollinger and cut effortlessly from left to right — deftly executing his cutback skills into the hole. The running seam opened up between Costa and Tauscher.
Once Dayne got into the second level of Iowa's defense, he used a nifty juke to freeze free safety Shane Hall, who was left swinging at air in the middle of the field.
Veering to the sideline, Dayne slowed down long enough to allow wide receiver Chris Chambers to get a blocking angle on Iowa cornerback Joe Slattery.
Dayne didn't need the block. Instead, he used another juke and cut back sharply inside, which left Slattery standing flat-footed and out of position.
Dayne then muscled through Chambers and Slattery for extra yardage before being knocked out of bounds by far-side cornerback Tarig Holman.
At the end of the 31-yard run, Hall bounced over the top of Dayne, the freshly minted all-time leading rusher in college football, and Camp Randall exploded.
Dayne jumped to his feet to accept hugs and chest bumps from his teammates.
VIDEO: Wisconsin Football: The Legacy of Ron Dayne
"I still run into people who were there that night," Dayne said years later. "They remember the electricity, where they sat, who they were with. It was a night to remember."
November 13, 1999.
"It was senior day," Tauscher said, "so there was a ton of energy and excitement."
Tauscher lived it twice.
In 1998, he was one of the seniors introduced before the final home game of the regular season. Tauscher was planning on leaving the UW and finishing up his teaching certificate at Youngstown State.
But he happened to run into Hueber at the Kentucky Derby that spring and his plans changed.
"I never wanted to leave (the UW)," Tauscher said. "It was more that I wanted to get myself ready for my next career, never once thinking about all of this."
After talking with Hueber, Alvarez and grad assistant Jason Eck, Tauscher conceded, "It was the easiest decision of my life" to come back for his final year of eligibility at Wisconsin.
But what if … he doesn't run into Hueber at the Derby on the first Saturday in May?
"Life can change in a second," he allowed. "Who knows? I have no idea. That's the beauty of it."
Here's what Tauscher did know going into the 1999 season with the Badgers.
Dayne was hunting the Heisman and Williams' career rushing mark.
"Coach Alvarez had made it known right off the get-go that this was going to be a team goal, especially for the offensive line," Tauscher said. "So, we embraced the fact that, 'Yeah, he's going to be a Heisman candidate and if everybody does their job, we can all accomplish those goals.'"
Going into the Iowa game, Tauscher said, "We knew that we were going to get the rushing record, we knew that we were going to win that game and everything was going to play out.
"But there was a tenseness early in the game where we pressed a little bit, and then Brooks took over. He ran all over the place. It was a quiet confidence that we were going to get it done."
Bollinger rushed 11 times for 113 yards and one touchdown against the Hawkeyes.
"After one of my runs," Bollinger recalled, "I remember saying to Ron, 'You better hurry up and get going or I'm going to have more yards than you.'"
Not that there was ever any doubt that he would set a new rushing standard.
"You knew it was going to happen at some point; at least you expected it to," Bollinger said. "But it wasn't happening, it wasn't happening. Once it did, everything was right with the world again."
Dayne ended up with 27 carries for 216 yards.
"There were times," Alvarez said, "when he was a man among boys."
November 13, 1999.
Chris McIntosh returned to the sideline and collapsed under the weight of the game's emotion and the season's expectations.
"I just put my head down and cried," said the 6-foot-7, 310-pound McIntosh, who had started his 49th consecutive game at left tackle and his final game in Camp Randall.
The Badgers had just chalked up another score in what would be a 41-3 rout of Iowa when the starting offensive line was removed from the game late in third quarter.
"I think it just all hit me as I sat on the sidelines," McIntosh said. "I was happy for the team. It had just been an uphill battle all year.
"We kind of dug ourselves out of that hole (back-to-back losses to Cincinnati and Michigan) and because we were able to do that, it said a lot about the kind of team we had."
The players and coaches stuck to the game plan through thick and thin.
"That's why I came here," said senior linebacker Chris Ghidorzi. "The guys in the program and the coaches all buy into one thing, and that's to win. And that's what we do.
"We were knocked down early, but we fought back. And now to win back-to-back Big Ten championships is beyond my wildest dreams."
During the fourth quarter, Alvarez left the Camp Randall press box and stood on the sideline, basking in the glow of his team's dominating effort.
(Alvarez had been coaching from upstairs following October knee surgery, which was blunted, in part, because of severe infection and necessitated a return visit to the Mayo Clinic. Less than 24 hours after routing Iowa, he traveled back to Rochester, Minnesota, and was hospitalized in advance of finally getting his knee replaced that Tuesday.)
One by one, the players approached Alvarez and hugged their coach. The biggest and warmest was shared between Dayne and Alvarez as the crowd roared its approval.
"When I went down on the sidelines and I saw Ronny smiling, it was very meaningful," Alvarez said. "How could you forget that big smile? I'll always have that picture in my mind."
It's why the group picture of the returning players from that team will be so meaningful.
Welcome home. Welcome back. Party like it's 1999.
