I can see it now, just as if it was yesterday, but it wasn’t. In fact, it was some four years ago that I had my first experience with the University of Wisconsin. One rainy day while I was still in high school I took the prospective student tour of the campus. A last look, if you will, at the campus before I made the commitment to attend this institution of higher learning.
What did I learn on that tour? I learned, for instance, that Agriculture Hall was built in 1903 and houses the largest lecture hall on campus. Neat!
Really, I learned that there is no better way to sell a university than to have a beautiful blonde tour guide walk around with a high school kid. She didn’t even know that much about the university, but I had seen enough to know that this was the place for me. So away I went that fall knowing the names of a few buildings, but I had had no formal education on some other very important things around UW.
During my three years at UW, I have learned a few things largely ignored on that tour. As a result I?ve come up with a little tour of my own. It’s free for any incoming or prospective students.
I believe the logical place to start this tour would be Camp Randall Stadium. At this moment you might easily see Camp Randall, but finding an entrance that is not all torn up with unfinished construction projects would be quite another task.
As home of the Badger football team this is where you and the majority of the student body will be, usually under the influence, for about six or seven Saturday mornings and afternoons every fall during your academic career. Win or lose, fun will had by all each weekend.
You will get sunburned early in the year, and later you will freeze. You will get drunk, fall down, pass out, eat brats and burgers, dance, sing songs, paint yourself up with Badger colors and wonder why you did it just to do it all over again the next weekend and the next year.
It takes hard work to be a Badger fan. After all, somebody, somewhere, decides what times the games will start, and they seem to like them early — meaning you better get used to your roommate waking you up at 8 a.m. and handing you a cold beer before you have even had time to recollect what happened the night before.
Of course you don?t have to do this; there is no rule, and no one forces you to partake, but I can’t imagine going through college without having a little fun or even a lot of fun. With good fortune the team will win more than it loses, and you may have the pleasure of watching a legend come to life just as Ron Dayne did only a few years ago.
A few things to know about Badger football: Coach Barry Alvarez is definitely the godfather of UW football, and if you look closely he even resembles one. No, not one of those Chicago-area dons but one of those more laid-back, Miami-type dons that are very tan and always wear the old-school, brown-tinted shades. You know, like in Donnie Brasco.
Other names you might want to know this fall are Brooks Bollinger, Anthony Davis, and Lee Evans. Bollinger and Davis passed and ran for over 1000 yards respectively last season. Evans was widely regarded as one of the top five players in the nation before tearing an ACL last spring, and his attempt at a speedy recovery from surgery has the clergy at the Bishop O’Connor Catholic Center working overtime.
On with the tour you say? So be it. Ever heard of Bo Ryan? It?s pretty likely that you hadn?t until last season when, in his first year coaching the Badgers, he led them to their first Big Ten title since the ’40s. The long wait was worth it, and all signs seem to be pointing to more of the same in the future. Season tickets will be tougher to obtain, but when the time arrives and you are confronted with the choice of studying away another dreary winter evening or heading to the Kohl Center to watch Kirk Penney play out his final season of basketball at UW I know that you will make the right choice. There will be plenty of time to study later.
Finally we?ll make a last stop on our tour, but we don?t go anywhere. The Kohl Center crew rips up the floorboards revealing the ice. Though last season was the final season of legendary hockey coach Jeff Sauer?s career at UW, the games will still be played. Mike Eaves has been named the new head coach, and the Kohl Center will continue to be one of the rowdiest venues in the sport. The opponent’s goalie will be made to feel like a “sieve,” and no matter how many players the other team puts out the crowd will always find it “debatable? whether it is at full strength.
Truly there are 1001 little things to know about sports at UW. I could never begin to tell them all to you — and what fun would that be for you, anyway? I?m sure you will all figure them out eventually, even the tricky ones, like what to say when you are sitting in section “O.”