By all accounts, former Wisconsin assistant Paul Chryst is on the verge of returning to the school as the head football coach, quickly filling a vacancy that opened earlier this week when two-year coach Gary Andersen bolted for Oregon State.

But before Barry Alvarez makes a hasty decision, we wanted to suggest one other candidate: Us.

We were browsing the official application for the Wisconsin head coaching job, and it sounds as though we could be — as Alvarez calls it — a good fit.

Here are some of the highlights:

Qualifications:

Bachelor's degree required. Boom! University of Minnesota, Class of 1999, five great years. Keeping it in the Big Ten.

Minimum of 5 years of successful collegiate football coaching experience preferred. Division I head coaching experience is also preferred.Division I head coaching experience is also preferred. Preferred, yes, but not required. That's fair, and that doesn't take us out of the running. It seems as though Alvarez and Wisconsin know that it's not fair to exclude newbies. How can you become a college football coach if you've never had experience … but how can you get experience if you've never been a college football coach? Chicken and egg.

Other qualifications include the ability to work cooperatively with diverse groups and administrators, faculty, staff and students. If the Star Tribune newsroom hasn't prepared us for this, it hasn't prepared us for anything.

The successful applicant must be able to develop and implement innovative approaches and solutions; work well independently and in teams; and be flexible in accepting new responsibilities. We're not sure if Alvarez read yesterday's guest post, but this blog has been around for eight years now. Innovative? You bet. Do we work independently? Sure! Do we collaborate? Of course! New responsibilities? Always adding something new! And that's just a fraction of what we do at work.

Conditions of Appointment:

This is a Limited appointment. Salary will be assigned within the appropriate range, commensurate with the candidate's qualifications and experience. An excellent benefits packageis also included. Anticipated start date on or after December 17, 2014.

We're totally flexible here, and we can assure you that the staff we would assemble — mostly RandBall commenters, lets be honest — won't grouse about salaries. A full 60 percent would probably work for beer and chicken wings. One guy for sure would work solely for Replacements bootlegs. We have a vacation planned during national signing day, but we'd be willing to fly in for the news conference if necessary.

In any event, we hope Alvarez will give it some thought before rushing into anything with Chryst. He's a fine candidate, but we're not sure what he brings to the table that we don't.