During his formative years as a high school coach, Barry Alvarez religiously studied the game while absorbing knowledge from a variety of sources. One spring, he decided to prove he was willing to go the extra mile (or miles in this case) to learn everything he could about the X’s and O’s of football. So he piled into his car with one of his coaching buddies (a former college teammate at Nebraska) and they toured multiple college football programs and campuses. Their first stop was North Texas State where Hayden Fry was intelligently innovativing his passing game. From there, they drove to Norman, Okla. and spent a day watching the Oklahoma Sooners practice. The final stop was Lawrence, Kan. and the University of Kansas for a coaching clinic. “I really worked hard at football,’’ Alvarez recalled fondly. “Anything I could get my hands on to read, I’d read. Anyplace I could
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