Barry Alvarez

He stepped down as CEO of Team Rubicon, raised 15 million in venture funding, and founded Groundswell, a corporate philanthropy platform turning charitable giving into an employee benefit.

Before all of that, he played offensive line for the Wisconsin Badgers under Barry Alvarez, then enlisted in the Marines, served two combat tours as a sniper in Iraq and Afghanistan, and won the Pat Tillman Award for service at the ESPYs.

Jake Wood, welcome to Business MVP.

Hey, thank you, Sammy.

Yeah, for sure.

So I want to talk about your sports career a little bit and how that translated for you.

So you played offensive line at Wisconsin under Barry Alvarez and then served two combat tours as a Marine.

We talked about that in the opening.

And I was like, well, this is easy, so...

Committed to Wisconsin and ended up playing four years there, three years with Barry Alvarez, one with Brett Bielema, and had the best four years of my life.

Met my wife there, who was on the basketball team, and it was just a dream, four years in Madison.

Yeah.

And then on ESPN Beaverdam, you are going to have a lot of Badger collegiate action.

As first, before we get to game time, you have the Barry Alvarez show at 6 p.m. on ESPN Beaverdam.

That's going to be followed tonight.

by Fairfield going to the Kohl Center to take on the Badgers men basketball team.

For me personally, it was only one of my first starts at free safety because I had been a wide receiver.

So I'd made a few bad calls in practice, and defense would look at me like, oh, snap, what's going on here? But, you know, Barry Alvarez, awesome defensive coordinator who was, you know, our coach, all three of us.

You know, he was relaxed.

He had confidence.

Yeah, you know, and a quick shout-out.

We could go through the entire roster and coaching staff, but a quick shout-out to a couple guys.

Barry Alvarez was perfect for that defense.

He was wonderful.

Let's also hear the insights of someone who can talk Wisconsin Badgers football a lot more knowledgeably than the rest of us.

It's time to hear the best of Barry Alvarez.

Let's hear what the coach had to say.

Why did they do that? Because it makes sense.

Don't be so touchy.

On ESPN Wisconsin College Game Day.

The Barry Alvarez Show weekly on ESPN Madison and the ESPN Madison YouTube channel.

Subscribe to the YouTube channel just like many of you have tuning into our pregame show here today so you get notified every time we go live.

But Minnesota looking pretty good.

I do think it's an interesting conversation and dilemma that we as Badgers fans could find ourselves in because if Wisconsin hits the metric that we had set for Luke Fickle coming into this season of show improvement, that's what Sean Eichor said, that's what Barry Alvarez said, and there's no doubt the team has improved from what it has been the last couple of years.

So show improvement, check.

Win a rivalry game, that could be doubtful.

These three are going to go enjoy some Coors Light.

We're going to continue on to the second hour of the program.

Lots to get to, including some commentary from legendary former Wisconsin Badgers head coach and director of athletics, Barry Alvarez.

Stick around.