The University of Wisconsin announced the appointment of Gary Andersen as the head coach of its football team Thursday.

The university's announcement came days after reports that it had approached Andersen to succeed Bret Bielema, who lately opted out for an Arkansas job, surfaced.

However, the university leadership maintained tight-lipped over revealing its decision on Andersen's appointment until Thursday.

Andersen became one of the most preferred coaches in the U.S., after guiding the Utah State University, his previous employer team to a major victory after 19 years.

He can build winners from scratch is how he is known in sports circles.

"There are a lot of things that I believe in,'' Andersen said, according to a university press release. "And the number one key in coaching is that I always talk about taking care of the kids first."

"I believe that as a head coach, and anybody's who's ever going to work for me is going to put the kids first. That was Mac's deal. That was important to him.''

On Tuesday, Andersen informed Utah State players about his decision to kiss good-bye to the university. He called upon each player individually and told them.

"I couldn't tell them yet that I had taken the job,'' he said."But I told them if I was offered the job I was going to take the job. There were a bunch of tears and hard conversations.''

Since Utah State was on holiday break, most of the players didn't return to the Logan campus after the bowl game. So there was no opportunity for Andersen to address his status at a team meeting.

"So I reached out to them -- 107 times,'' he said of his individual calls to each player on the roster. "Probably seven or eight, I got their voicemail and I haven't gotten a hold of them yet.''

Obviously, it would have been easier to send out a text message to the group.

"But I just couldn't do that,'' Andersen said. "So I picked up the phone and started calling them one at a time. The kids were awesome, too.''

The report said that players at Utah State were understandably unhappy to hear the news that he was going to Wisconsin.

"But almost everyone said, "Coach, we understand,'' he said.