By MARQUES EVERSOLL

Once upon a time, Wisconsin football legend Barry Alvarez announced he’d soon retire from coaching. And after his newly hired defensive coordinator Bret Bielema molded a loaded Badgers defense to the sixth-best scoring defense in the country in his very first season, Alvarez decided that he’d seen enough—Bielema was his guy.

The Post-Alvarez Era of Wisconsin football would begin after the 2005 season, and Bielema would write the first chapter.

Whoops. One year after allowing 15.4 points per game, that number ballooned to 23.8 points per game. In 2004—aided by the help of five eventual draft picks (Erasmus James, Scott Starks, Jonathan Welsh, Anttaj Hawthorne and Jason Jefferson) and another guy (Jim Leonhard) who’s still playing in the NFL—the Badgers defense was great. Then, the players left, Bielema stayed, and the defense wasn’t great.

Now, the Bielema Era was far from a failure. He went 68-24 and led the Badgers to three straight Rose Bowls.

But if Alvarez could do it all over again, perhaps he would scrap the “coach-in-waiting” thing, and instead, wait until he coached his final game before tabbing his replacement. Because the same year Bielema’s defense took a step back, Wisconsin’s offense—led by first-year offensive coordinator Paul Chryst—took a leap forward.

In 2005, the Badgers’ defense allowed 8.4 more points per game than they did the year before, while the Badgers’ offense scored 13.5 more points per game. You do the math.

Call it bad timing, call it what you want; Chryst was more important to the direction the Badgers were headed than Bielema was. And now, for the second time in two years, Alvarez has been granted a mulligan.

Many considered Chryst to be a top target when Bielema bolted for Arkansas in December 2012. But at the time, Chryst had been the head coach a Pittsburgh for only one year—and it was a job that Alvarez helped him get.

Alvarez settled on Gary Andersen, fresh off an 11-2 season with Utah State. Andersen tweaked the typical Wisconsin style, implementing some spread concepts into the offense and transitioning from the 4-3 to the 3-4 defensive front. He went 19-7 in two seasons at Wisconsin without his guys, but quickly turned his shoulder on the program before getting a chance to show what he could do with his guys.

So, here we go again. Alvarez swung and missed on Bielema. He took a second strike on Andersen. He’s down in the count and can’t afford a third strike. When Alvarez was the coach, Wisconsin wasn’t a stepping stone job. He took it in 1990, went 1-10 in his first year, and then went 117-63-4 in the next 15 seasons. He’s the czar of Badgers football, and he needs to find a guy that wants to be in Madison long-term—like he did.

Chryst is the solution.

During his seven years as the offensive coordinator at Wisconsin, Chryst oversaw offenses led by John Stocco, Tyler Donovan—(cough) Dustin Sherer and Allen Evridge (cough)—Scott Tolzien and Russell Wilson. With the exception of a disastrous 2008 season with Sherer and Evridge under center—when they finished just 7-6 and were dominated in the Champs Sports Bowl—the Badgers never averaged less than 29.2 points per game with Chryst calling the shots.

Wisconsin will always have an abundance of big uglies; the running game isn’t going anywhere. That’s the culture that’s been established since the Alvarez administration. Chryst’s offense at Madison was like a hot knife through butter.

In his last two years leading the offense—2010 and 2011—the Badgers averaged 41.5 and 44.1 points per game, respectively. With the constant four-year turnover in college football, a program can’t bank on having a Wilson-type talent at quarterback, like the Badgers did in 2011; however, having a consistent system in place that allows for a seamless transition between quarterbacks is essential.

Chryst, in his first season in charge of Wisconsin’s offense, took Stocco, who completed just 52.6 percent of his passes for 1,999 yards, nine touchdowns and seven interceptions as a sophomore in 2004 and turned him into a 21-touchdown, nine-interception guy, completing 60.1 percent of his passes as a junior 2005. It was night and day.

I can hear the nay-sayers now.

But Paul Chryst is just 19-19 in three seasons at Pittsburgh. He’s proven he can’t be a head coach. If he can’t win the ACC (formerly Big East) then he can’t win in the Big Ten. He’s not a “sexy” hire. This. That.

I don’t care.

Chryst is a Madison native. He understands the culture of Wisconsin football. He knows what works in Madison. He certainly knows how to work with Alvarez. The only way anyone else should be considered for the head-coaching job at Wisconsin is if Paul Chryst says no.

Marques produces and co-hosts the afternoon show SportsLine on weekdays from 4:00-6:00pm, and hosts the Saturday Morning Showcase from 8:00-10:00am on Sports Radio 107.5 and 1400 The Fan in Green Bay. You can follow him on Twitter @MJEversoll.