I’m a Wisconsin kid through-and-through, really since the day I was born. Both my parents, plus a grandfather and a few aunts and and uncles, graduated from UW, and while I never felt overt pressure to attend school in Madison, it was always the school at the top of my list. The reasons were mostly irrelevant–it was more a destiny I felt no desire to deny.
I moved into the dorms with the help of my roommate, who also happened to be my cousin and a sophomore, and we spent a day or two getting acclimated, setting up more video game consoles than we probably needed, and meeting the other guys on our wing. The Lakeshore dorm organization (it shared its name with a brand of rubber clogs) put together a welcome event to teach incoming students all the cheers we would need to know in the student section during football games. We were also lured by the promise of free lemonade or something, which was nice because it was probably 90 degrees during move-in week.
So within a few days of transplanting my whole existence to a 11×16 box, I was already being indoctrinated with key-shaking, vowel-shouting, and around-jumping, though I probably would’ve picked up on that last one without any help. Some of the more distasteful chants were suspiciously left out. The traditions were demonstrated by cheerleaders and a giant anthropomorphic badger, and were often a combination of classic rock lyrics and mindless screaming. Then a day or two after that, and four days before I’d even attended my first college class (it would have been three, but I somehow had no class on Tuesdays in my first semester), I donned a red shirt and trekked to Camp Randall for my first Badger football game as an undergrad.
We left for the game early and got good seats as I remember, which might not be the norm for Wisconsin students but was always my preference. The Badgers were coming off an exceptional 2006 season, capped off by a victory over Darren McFadden and the Arkansas Razorbacks in the Capital One Bowl. But 2007 saw the departure of John Stocco, and new starter Tyler Donovan had been handed the keys to the team little more than a week earlier. But while the score stayed close through the first quarter, a pair of unanswered touchdowns in the second blew things open and allowed us fans to comfortably focus on complex “wave” dynamics and figuring out whether we should clasp or point our fingers when emoting P.J. Hill’s last name. That was the way non-conference games were expected to progress–Wisconsin has taken plenty of heat for the lack of top-notch competition represented in their non-conference scheduling, but the powers-that-be seem confident that the Big Ten schedule consistently speaks for itself and they’ll just ignore those whippersnappers on TV thank you very much.
That part never really mattered to me. High-intensity football wasn’t on the top of my wish list in early September. I wanted to see wins. I wanted to watch Bucky do pushups and goad the band into playing Swingtown, which they were prohibited from doing at the time (the intent was lost on the students, we swore like sailors anyway). Those were integral parts of the game; parts of the day, really, as nothing dominated Fall semester Saturdays like college football.
I’m sure every Badger fan has similar stories remembered in similarly exhaustive detail. For Wisconsin fans, game day is a thing of myth, a ritual-filled experience scored by the Steve Miller Band and Neil Diamond. There’s a connection to the team that doesn’t seem fully possible with professional fandom. That’s the beauty of college sports, and by no means is it restricted to football: every victory for the Cardinal and White feels like an accomplishment students, alumni, and fans are truly a part of. We might not have any real impact on what happens on the field or the court, but we’re convinced (and sometimes assured) that we’re a vital part of the process.
Maybe it’s a misguided feeling. Does any of it really matter? Frankly, that concern–that college sports are at best a fun distraction, at worst a corrupt waste of time–just frustrates me. We don’t get to go around praising and glorifying the college experience and deny the impact of cheering on the athletic department. I’m probably preaching to the choir. In all likelihood, your choice to visit this site and read these words would suggest that you’re not going to be one to call me or anybody else out for making such a claim. It’s an old-fashioned one anyway.
But it’s a feeling that I expect to frequently come back to in this column. While we’re going to focus on bringing great Wisconsin sports news and analysis to our readers, it’s our hope at Badger of Honor that we can peek behind the headlines of college sports. That means writing like fans, for fans. I’m not an objective reporter and this isn’t an official press-release–why pretend otherwise?
That’s my introduction. Nothing transcendent, probably even nothing unique. But it matters. Every screaming fan from the Kohl Center to the Fieldhouse matters because we’re all part of the same team. We’re better off red, and we’ll see you next week.