OPINION & EDITORIAL
Sport weekends underrated
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Also by Jamie Shookman:
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- Citizens set bad example (October 5, 2004)
- Sport weekends underrated (September 20, 2004)
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by Jamie Shookman
Monday, September 20, 2004
Last week’s Sports Illustrated on Campus voted Tennessee’s college football weekend the best in the country. Wisconsin came in ninth, just barely making its way into the top ten. The brief description of Madison’s football weekend was accompanied with a picture showing a sea of red fans cheering as Bucky completed one push-up for each Badger point scored.
Last year, however, Sports Illustrated on Campus voted Madison as the country’s best college town. Each student flipped through the magazine with pride, turning past the painted face of a football fan on the cover to the picture of the State Capitol and various athletic representatives gracing the inside pages. Save your inflated private school tuition. Spare the supposed ivy-league prestige. As the ranking showed, students attending the University of Wisconsin definitely know how to get the most from their college experience.
Madison is certainly deserving of the recognition. Its university boasts exceptional academics, a diverse student body, and the surroundings of a clean, beautiful city. Its students can experience the arts and theater opportunities of a much larger city, the Farmer’s Market of a more rural setting, and the excitement of drawing people from across the country for events such as the Iron Man. But as the best college town in the nation, there’s nothing Madison does better than a football weekend.
Freshmen soon find out what exactly a Madison football weekend entails. It involves dragging oneself out of bed early on game day, replacing breakfast with a round of shots, attempting a two-story beer bong on Dayton Street, keg parties on Breese Street, and an endless torrent of screaming, shouting, cheering, and taunting once inside Camp Randall.
The events of a football weekend certainly extend beyond the dorms. The marching band can be found playing in Camp Randall and the surrounding streets hours before most students even wake up. Regent Street is packed for several miles past the stadium, displaying Wisconsinites’ unsurpassed ability to finish a brat and numerous beers before nine in the morning. The swaying and singing in unison of the time-honored “Varsity” shows the pride and camaraderie inherent in declaring oneself an alumni or student of Wisconsin.
A football weekend oftentimes includes friends and family staying for a few days while celebrating not just the football, but also the spirit of Wisconsin’s game day. Whether “jumping around” for what Sports Illustrated on Campus called “the rowdiest three minutes in college football” or providing seventy percent of the fans for the last three Rose Bowls in which the Badgers played, Wisconsin fans show that football weekends are what they do best. Rain, snow or even a poor win-loss record may deplete the attendance elsewhere, but not in Wisconsin.
Now, if Madison is the No. 1 college town in the nation, this seems to make Wisconsin deserving of at least more than the ninth rated football weekend. Certainly, Sports Illustrated on Campus knows it under-ranked Wisconsin, as do all the students and fans in Madison each weekend. Yet, while we should be the true victors of the newest ranking, the magazine seems to feel that the spotlight must be shared. If a Badger fan occupied its cover year after year, maybe other schools would feel outmatched and unable to compete on Wisconsin’s level. For the sake of magazine subscriptions and morale nationwide, Wisconsin might just have to watch itself be knocked down a couple spots every now and then.
As the Badgers were eking out their win in Arizona this weekend, they had to stop momentarily for a rain delay. A shot of the fans before the interruption showed a stadium filled with open seats. I couldn’t help but compare the scene to last year’s cold and rainy Ohio State game. The fans and especially the students still filled the stands, rushed the field at the end, and for many students, experienced the best game of their college career. Wisconsin certainly draws together a unique brand of people, a people that in many ways cannot be compared to the rest of the country. Our football weekends allow these people to come together for an event that is unsurpassed, regardless of what any ranking may show.
Jamie Shookman (jlshookman@wisc.edu) is a junior majoring in political science and English.
Anonymous (September 20, 2004 @ 9:00am):
This is crap
Anonymous (September 20, 2004 @ 11:29am):
Jamie,
I agree with you that Madison football weekends are awesome. I am just curious where your evidence is that they are better
than any of the nine other schools that were ranked higher than us. Have you been to any of their football weekends? Have you been an ubiased observer of the football weekends at all the big schools around the country? If you are going to come out and say that SI was incorrect in making their ranking you need to address the criteria that they used in coming to their conclusion and explain through evidence that they were wrong. I am glad that in your head our football weekend is better than the ninth best, but I don't think that really counts for anything because you aren't really qualified to make that decision. Besides, what's your point?
Anonymous (September 20, 2004 @ 3:19pm):
Jamie,
You show your age when you report that "Rain, snow or even a poor win-loss record may deplete the attendance elsewhere, but not in Wisconsin." I remember the days pre-Alvarez when our team sucked and the stands were half full. Now, that will probably never happen again but most of the other schools in SI rankings have a football history that goes back generations. Having attended games at Georgia, Texas A&M, Alabama, and Tennessee I can assure you they take football fandom every bit as seriously as we do.
That being said, I too think we're the best. That's why I have 4 season tickets even though I live in Albuquerque, NM. I want to make sure that when I retire from the Air Force in 12 years I have seats to the best college football experience in the nation. GO BADGERS!
