Barry Alvarez, the University of Wisconsin’s winningest football coach, will retire from his longtime post as the school’s athletic director at the end of June, he said Tuesday.
The announcement by Alvarez, who turned 74 in December, was widely expected around the university and throughout the Big Ten Conference, which he helped shepherd toward an abridged football season during the coronavirus pandemic. His departure will leave Wisconsin without the day-to-day presence of a mainstay over decades, who oversaw enormous growth in the athletic department and rebuilt its football program into a modern powerhouse of the Midwest.