How much can you actually know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight?

Not a fight of physical nature but one of self-preservation, a fight for who you are and what you stand for. Without pride in yourself, there aren’t many places for you in this world. You don’t belong on the UW campus with a football tradition that will provide you with the best Saturdays of your life. You don’t deserve to wear a Badgers logo or tell a crazed fan to calm down. You have to show pride in the university you attend.

Every time someone snickers at your game-day face paint or your all-red ensemble, you can’t shy away. You have to hold your head high with pride and represent the Badgers as though you were born one of the selected few who have the right to wear such colors.

Represent the state’s name as well as the tradition that goes along with being a Badger. For those people who care not about how the Badgers perform on the playing field, I would hope that you transfer to Northwestern, where your kind is tolerated. Everyone should take pride in what our student athletes do on the playing field. Whether you like it or not, those individuals are all the representation that some people will see of UW.

This is why you wake up at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning to start celebrating what you are. This is why the herds of alumni return each home game to cheer on the students as well as the athletes. This is why you are a Badger.

Being a Badger means more than cheering on the football team when they’re having a good season or buying season tickets for basketball. Being a Badger means that you can show pride in the No. 3 lightweight women’s crew team and the No. 23 wrestling program. When you run into student athletes on campus, you congratulate them and wish them luck. When you stand with your fellow Badgers at events, you don’t sit down, no matter how hard it may be.

If you want to see if you’re a real fan, a real Badger, go to a road game to cheer on your team. Test your loyalty and grit as opposing fans spit profanities at you and trash-talk you while you’re in line for the bathroom. Look right at them and stand tall and proud. Fight back when the enemy starts to push you around. Scream your fight song, wave your flag and draw attention to yourself. You’re a Badger and you’re not scared to say so.

There is no place else on Earth like Madison, Wis. You’ll have the memories you build here for years and years to come. You’ll remember that Bucky did 49 pushups against Penn State your senior year, you’ll remember back-to-back Big Ten Championships, and you may even remember the two-story beer bong you did.

Being a Badger means being a fighter. The team doesn’t give up when it’s down by 15 at halftime or when it’s playing the national champion favorites. The players don’t run away from the challenge, and neither should you.

Tradition is what has built the immense pride that every incoming freshman will soon learn. If you were satisfied with just getting into a prestigious university and have no desire to show your pride with all your fellow students, then don’t bother telling your parents you’ve made the dean’s list because you’ve failed to realize what this experience is truly about.

Even if you don’t like sports, you have to get that overwhelming feeling of pride watching more than 75,000 people standing together for a single cause. You don’t have to like athletics to enjoy what it has to offer. Go to a wrestling meet with friends or to a volleyball game with your floor; you’ll find that when they start cheering, you do too. It’s about having fun and being proud of who you are.

It’s about being a Badger.