ESPN.com’s Austin Ward asks:

Losing 59-0 in the Big Ten title game is one thing. That was a short-term setback, and it didn’t change the fact that Gary Andersen had just won the West Division and was starting to load up his roster with talented, athletic players who could continue to make his program an annual contender.

Losing another coach to what the Badgers would almost certainly view as a less-prestigious program is the bigger shot to the ego, though, and it will be the cause of some seriously difficult looks in the mirror for Barry Alvarez and his athletic department. This might well be another hurdle that can be cleared in a small time frame, but it suggests there might be more long-term issues for Wisconsin if it can’t keep its successful coaches around in a conference that appears to be back on the upswing.

No offense to Oregon State or Arkansas, but those aren’t the kinds of programs that Wisconsin would like to consider as its football peers, and yet Andersen is on his way to the former after Bret Bielema surprisingly bolted for the latter. And while it’s hard to consider Wisconsin a stepping-stone job based on what appear to be lateral moves, there seems to be something keeping it from becoming a final destination.

“The last two coaches have proven that,” Alvarez said. “It wasn’t a destination job for them, but it was for me and it is for [basketball coach] Bo Ryan. Everybody is a little bit different. I don’t worry about that.

“We’ve got a good job, we’ve got a good place, we’ve got a consistent program. We’ve got a lot to sell. I’m not trying to paint any other picture other than a very positive picture, because it is positive.”

The list of pros is indeed long for anybody who would like to come take over for Andersen, and Alvarez was expecting a long night on Wednesday with his “phone ringing off the hook” with candidates interested in leading a program that has played in five consecutive New Year’s Day bowls. There are upgraded facilities on hand, including a new weight room and an academic center. And the path to the College Football Playoff currently isn’t the most arduous around, though winning the Big Ten West isn’t exactly a cakewalk with Nebraska, Minnesota and occasionally Iowa on hand in a division that can hand out a few bruises.

But there are certainly cons that come with the Wisconsin job, from a shallower recruiting pool in its backyard to high academic standards that can potentially trim its options to fill out the roster. But those didn’t stop Andersen or Bielema from winning games, competing for championships or heading to prestigious postseason bowls. The issues in retaining those two coaches appear to be things Wisconsin actually has some control over and could change.

Is there really no room for flexibility in terms of getting in a few more recruits who might not have traditionally qualified? There’s nothing wrong with a program rigorously holding itself to tough academic standards, but that makes it tougher to put together the best possible team and to possibly keep coaches who could more easily craft a squad in their image elsewhere.

Why doesn’t Wisconsin have an assistant ranked higher than No. 77 in the nation in annual salary, according to the most recent USA Today database? There’s no cap on spending for coaches, which makes it the one commodity in which schools with title aspirations should never get thrifty.

How can Wisconsin expect to keep a coaching staff together if it doesn’t rank any higher than No. 9 in the league in combined compensation for assistant coaches, behind the likes of Maryland, Rutgers and even rival Minnesota? Bielema had already railed against the lack of financial support to keep his assistants around when he left to take over the Razorbacks.

The possible academic hurdle can’t be cleared with a checkbook, but certainly the other problem can be addressed simply by spending more money, and no school in the Big Ten can make any sort of legitimate claim that it doesn’t have cash rolling in, thanks to its television contracts. With Wisconsin’s passionate fan base filling Camp Randall Stadium, it’s also unlikely that its revenue stream is going to dry up any time soon.

With Andersen, though, dollar signs probably weren’t the tipping point; Oregon State actually checked in one spot behind Wisconsin nationally at No. 41 in payroll for assistants.

So what else is there? Perhaps the problem is with the boss, with Alvarez looming over a program he led for so many years. Given that he was able to win at a high level despite some of those limitations, might he or the athletic department be unwilling to make concessions that the game has truly changed since Alvarez was on the sideline? That question might be more difficult to answer and even more challenging to fix, given Alvarez’s iconic stature with Wisconsin.

Ward reports on Ohio State for ESPN.com, so his mentioning UW’s academic standards is a bit ironic, since Ohio State’s academic standard for admission appears to be having a pulse rate greater than zero.

The advantage of having observed UW athletics for longer than Ward (who apparently joined ESPN in 2012) is that I can correctly point out that UW did at least relax academic standards to allow such players as Brent Moss, Alvarez’s first star running back, to get in. That doesn’t mean UW doesn’t still have higher academic standards for athletes than other schools.

When this first came up a long time ago, the thought of this writer and his father, both UW graduates, was that we didn’t want our degrees cheapened by letting in lesser students to UW because of their athletic ability. My opinion has changed somewhat for two reasons. First, colleges do let in students who don’t necessarily meet base academic standards under several criteria beyond athletic ability — to name two possibilities, some minority students or, in the case of private colleges, children or grandchildren of alumni.

As a graduate of our state’s world class university who previously worked at a college not known as being academically select, I am less convinced how much this matters. Your college diploma, after all, is based on what you do in college, not high school. There are a lot of college students who got good grades in high school because they were smart, not necessarily for exerting themselves scholastically. Many of them get to college and find out the hard way that it’s a lot tougher than high school. I suspect I have gotten no more than one job in my lifetime because of my UW diploma, and that was before I actually got said diploma.

But it’s pretty obvious that UW isn’t going to relax its admission standards enough to make a significant difference. Therefore, you have to be able to succeed with what’s there, instead of trying to change things and failing. That suggests (as reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) …

According to a source close to the UW program, former UW assistant Paul Chryst, a Madison native, is poised to return to his alma mater.

“I thought this would be the scenario from Day 1,” the source told the Journal Sentinel on Thursday night. “He will put together a good staff.”

Neither Chryst nor Alvarez was available Thursday night.

“I always keep a short list,” Alvarez said Wednesday in discussing the stunning departure of Andersen to Oregon State. “And we will proceed in our search for a new head coach immediately.”

UW officials posted the job opening Thursday. According to the posting, applications must be received by Dec. 17.

Chryst, 49, is in his third season as head coach at Pittsburgh. His overall record is 19-19 but he inherited a mess from former coach Todd Graham and instituted a new offensive system. …

According to the source close to the UW program:

Alvarez, who flew to Tampa, Fla., Thursday for an Outback Bowl promotion, was able to meet with Chryst. Chryst was already in Florida, assumed to be recruiting.

The source believes Chryst could bring with him Joe Rudolph, who is the Panthers’ assistant head coach/offensive coordinator.

Rudolph was a two-time all-Big Ten offensive lineman under Alvarez and was UW’s tight ends coach from 2008-’11.

“Joe will be able to sell Wisconsin,” the source said. “That is important.”

The source also believes Chryst might be able to lure Bob Bostad back to UW. Bostad is the offensive line coach with the Tennessee Titans.

“He had the itch to coach in the NFL, but Paul and Bob are tight,” the source said.

Bostad, a native of Pardeeville, was on UW’s staff with Chryst from 2006-’11. He served as the tight ends coach, offensive line coach and running game coordinator.