Looking for a new mid-lecture attention drain? Try the new popular sports, lifestyle and culture blog on the University of Wisconsin’s campus.
The Victory Lap is a blog run by fifth-year senior Jeremy Davis of Appleton, Wis., which aims to capture the culture of Madison and UW’s campus through the eyes of the common man.
Very popular with the Badger men’s basketball team of which Davis is a manager, players enjoy reading the blog to entertain themselves during a long day.
“He [Davis] just puts a funny spin on sports, news and campus life so we enjoy reading it,” Redshirt Junior Forward Duje Dukan said. ” Plus he’s our friend so we love to support him.”
Davis cites both Barstool sports and Club Trillion blogs as inspirations for his blog, but he wanted to find something that UW students who enjoy reading those blogs could relate to.
“The majority of the stuff on there is stuff that applies to Madison students or people in the area,” Davis said. “It’s just Wisconsin specific. I wanted to give people on campus that read that kind of material a reason to go to the Victory Lap.”
Boasting more than 5,000 followers on twitter and 130,000 hits on the site, The Victory Lap has gained a hold on campus as a serious player.
According to Davis, blogging comes naturally with the atmosphere that Madison as a city creates.
“Madison has in particular a lot of stuff going on,” said Davis. “We’re in every countdown for best school, party school, sports, etc. So why not have a cut-loose way of covering it all that reflects the attitude of our campus?”
The blog started as a ploy for Davis to start working with Barstool of which he was a big fan, but when that didn’t work out he realized he still had an audience who enjoyed reading his content.
As an English major Davis enjoys writing creatively to entertain, not necessarily to inform. When speaking with Mark Titus, former Ohio State basketball player, blogger and Grantland contributor, Davis realized that his love of writing could be used for more than course work.
“I got to meet Mark Titus at the Big Ten Tournament. To be honest he was one of the big inspirations of mine that I read,” Davis said. “He always wrote about how academic writing had sucked his love for actual writing out. I would say Club Trillion reminded me it doesn’t always have to be like that. You can have fun with it and entertain without actually having to be a by-the-books kind of guy.”
In the wake of the Final Four run by the UW basketball team, “TVL” as its called by readers or “lappers,” is currently hosting Junior Center Frank Kaminsky as a guest blogger detailing his experience round by round in the NCAA tournament.
Whether you’re looking for the best bars to go to in order to meet Madison’s most eligible bachelorettes, the first-hand accounts of the NCAA tournament as told by major players on the UW Badgers basketball team or just a criticism of the crazy things that happen in the city of Madison’s every day world, The Victory Lap is the window into that fantasy.
“I took stuff from the Barstool repertoire, and I thought it would be cool to have something on campus that would have the same type of genre,” Davis said. “You’d be shocked at how not long it takes to come up with some entertaining stuff.”
[All Photos Courtesy of The Victory Lap]
