IN WISCONSIN, FANS HAVE A BARREL OF LAUGHS . . . : They Do Their Celebrating, Win or Lose

At a recent University of Wisconsin football game, the crowd was entertained in the fourth quarter by a troupe of high-kicking students in short red dresses.

Dancing around the edges of the field, the young women were accompanied, as usual, by 20 drummers from the university’s marching band. Four drummers were kept in their seats, along with the 200 other Badger musicians, “in case of an emergency,” band director Mike Leckrone said.

What emergency?

“We might score a touchdown,” he said.

Fat chance. The Badgers aren’t a big scoring team. In this century, they’ve won less than half the time--and it’s an upset any year they win more often than they lose. “On, Wisconsin,” indeed.

Across the state to the northeast, on the banks of the Fox River, the Green Bay Packers have in recent decades fared even worse. The Wisconsin element that prefers pro ball over college games has been continually frustrated by the football team that is based in one of the most famous small towns in America.

Except when the pros are on strike, defeat often visits the same weekend in Madison and Green Bay.

There are only two big-time football teams in the state and 1987 is an infamous anniversary season for both:

--It’s been 19 years since the Packers put their last Super Bowl team on the field.

--It’s been 25 years since the Badgers last played in the Rose Bowl.

This record of non-achievement is believed to be unsurpassed in football, at least in a state with a population of 4.8 million.

Accordingly, the crowds for the Badgers and Packers have dwindled away to almost nothing, right?

No, sir, that’s dead wrong. At both Madison and Green Bay, football ticket sales are still booming.

Perversely, in this state, the more their teams lose, the more attention they seem to get.

Consider:

--At Madison, Badger football attendance has averaged 70,410 since 1970, although, in those 17 years, the Wisconsin team has had only 5 winning seasons. The average Badger crowd since 1974 in a stadium that seats 77,280 has been 72,017.

--At Green Bay, where Lambeau Field seats 57,091, the Packers have maintained a waiting list for season-ticket subscribers since the Vince Lombardi era. Although Packer teams have experienced only 4 winning seasons in the 20 years since Lombardi departed, the waiting list today is up to 9,000.

These things could never happen in Los Angeles. They couldn’t even happen in football-mad Texas.

What’s going on here? Why is there so much Wisconsin interest in football teams that lose so often?

There seem to be three ways to look at it:

Hope: Packer fans live on hopes and dreams.

“We know what it’s like to win,” John Wirch, a Green Bay paper company executive, said at a recent game.

“We’ve won more (National Football League) championships than any other team (11 in all). We expect to win again--so when you own a ticket priority here, you own a valuable commodity.”

Year after year, Wirch and his friends cling to their season tickets--and customarily fill Green Bay’s stadium.

Music: Badger fans live on the color and music of college football.

“It’s the band that brings us together,” said Peder Culver II of New London, Wis., referring to the university’s marching band, which is mainly responsible for the unique holiday ambiance at Wisconsin games.

Purdue graduate Mary Jane Culver, alluding to the Badger band’s creative postgame concerts, said: “At Madison, they always win the fifth quarter.”

For thousands of Wisconsin students and alumni, the magnet is less the game than the fifth-quarter dancing in the aisles, or at their seats, to a 200-piece rock band.

Beer: Above all, football means parties at Madison and Green Bay. At both places, fall weekends are obviously for having fun.

Not that they don’t enjoy themselves in Indiana, too--or Los Angeles, for that matter--but Wisconsin people seem to have a special talent for partying.

For instance, in 1985, the most recent year for which reports are available, Wisconsin folks drank 153,492,563 gallons of beer.

In a state that stands 16th in U.S. population, Wisconsin ranks third in beer consumption.

According to Beverage World, the industry magazine that makes the surveys, Americans consume a per capita average 24.2 gallons of beer annually. In Wisconsin, it’s 32.9 gallons.

On the average, that includes every man, woman and child in the state, of course, although there is no evidence that the kids are holding up their end.

As for Wisconsin adults, they’d plainly rather drink at football games than in the kitchen.

They love to win football games, too. Winning is hardly despised in Wisconsin. But if they had to choose, some would really rather drink than win.

“UW is the place to go for a party,” said a Madison-trained lawyer and Badger fan, James Lindgren, who noted also that his school excels academically.

Academicians, in fact, generally rank UW among America’s top 10 universities.

Lindgren, choosing to emphasize the more important of these values, said: “(At Wisconsin), the drinking starts at 4 p.m. Fridays.”

That puts a heavy load on the weekend, in a manner of speaking. But it’s also characteristic of Wisconsin natives that they carry their liquor superbly.

Falling-down drunks are rarely seen at football games here.

To the contrary, most Badger fans seem orderly and well mannered, now that body-passing is against the law.

Indeed, the Madison Police Department is only a little busier on football weekends than it is the rest of the year.

“The problems are negligible,” said a department spokeswoman, Maryanne Thurber. “Intoxication isn’t an arrestable offense in this state. We issue a few more citations (on football weekends) and send a few more students to detox--that’s about all.”

Things appear to be about the same at Green Bay on a football weekend, although, proportionately, the Packers seem to attract a larger percentage of serious drinkers.

But that’s only because they’re professionals, according to Alvin Suehring, a farmer from Clintonville, Wis., who has been a Green Bay fan for as long as he can remember.

Asked why Packer crowds are still large despite years of losing, Suehring, who comes to town for one game a year, said: “Loyalty and (liquor). Some of these people don’t even know they’re here.”

“$300 Minimum Fine for Bringing in Cans, Bottles, Coolers, Jugs or Ice Chests.” Sign at a Lambeau Field gate.

Here are four things that set Green Bay apart from most pro football locations:

--With a population of about 90,000, this is the smallest NFL city.

--Every ticket is always sold. There’s never a television blackout in Green Bay.

--Winning and losing are economically irrelevant. The Packers made $3 million on their losing team last season.

--When the Packers moved into the pro football mainstream three years ago and erected 72 luxury boxes for 816 privileged fans, one of their players promptly rented a $15,000 box.

He was, naturally, a quarterback, Lynn Dickey, who acted to insulate his wife from Green Bay’s boo birds.

“Good thinking,” a friend told him.

Invariably, NFL quarterbacks and teams are chided and booed at home when they lose--be they Rams or Packers. In Green Bay, however, that is a rather recent development. Not until the late 1970s, with a decade’s worth of frustration behind them, did Packer fans resort to booing the home troops. And then, only during the Packers’ most exasperating play.

In the first embarrassing moments after the Raider game in Green Bay earlier this year, for example, when the home forces had been blanked, 20-0, the crowd stood up and angrily yelled some advice.

In recognition of the NFL’s gathering labor storm, the fans, shouting in unison, told the Packers: “Strike!” . . . “Strike!” . . . “Strike!”

Some of those yelling had flown in from out of state, piloting their own planes. The Packers are owned by 1,800 shareholders, all originally Wisconsin citizens, although in time, many moved elsewhere.

There are Packer owners in 46 states. “We think we’re the real America’s team,” said club publicist Lee Remmel.

Or world’s team. Packer shareholders live in Japan, Scotland, Africa and Australia.

What they all own is a piece of a nonprofit corporation. No one is allowed to hold more than 200 shares, which never pay dividends.

“The idea is to make it impossible for any nucleus to cash in by selling the franchise to another city,” Remmel said.

“I own a share myself. Bought it for $25 when we reorganized in the 1950s, and it’s still worth $25, no more, no less.”

The Packers are the only community-owned team in the league, and many critics say that is what is wrong with them.

Community businessmen with no knowledge of football have hired and hung onto two losing coaches--both former Packer stars--throughout the last 13 years: Bart Starr (53-77-3) and Forrest Gregg (20-29-1).

Still, the small town’s fascination with its big-time team continues unabated.

“Whether they win or lose, it’s fun to live in hunting country like this and see the best football in the world,” said Jim Wirch, a Green Bay trucking company supervisor.

His brother John, also a veteran season ticket-holder, said: “The closeness with other fans (in a small town) is a lot of it. It’s a warm relationship that goes on and on.”

But think about this:

On Dec. 1, 1985, no fewer than 36,000 ticket-holders stayed away from a Packer game as the club set a no-show record.

That, however, wasn’t the real story that day. The real story was that 20,000 Packer fans sat there watching a 5-7 team as 13 1/2 inches of snow fell on Green Bay.

“Each person must hold their own ticket.”

Sign at a University of Wisconsin ticket gate.

Despite the poor grammar of University of Wisconsin sign painters, this is a place with a sterling academic reputation.

Not long ago, Penn historian David Webster ranked UW in an academic tie with the University of Chicago for fourth in the nation, behind Harvard, Cal and Yale.

That’s pretty fast company.

There is, however, one striking difference between this school and the rest of the company. None of the others is a bona fide party school.

Well, Yale, maybe. They do raise a little hell at New Haven. But even there, they don’t match the scope of party fun at Madison, where no fewer than 69 of the university’s choicest parking lots are assigned on game days to tailgate revelers.

“Meet us at 10 (a.m.) at Lot 40,” Badger fan Gordon Culver said. “Remember, Lot 40 stands for lot of brandy.”

Brandy at a Wisconsin game? Is the beer all gone?

“We’re only No. 3 in (per capita) beer consumption,” said Milwaukee Journal reporter Jeff Browne. “We’re No. 1 in brandy consumption. Nobody knows why.”

Culver knows why. On a recent football Saturday, he and several of his friends from the New London area drove their cars 2 1/2 hours to Lot 40, and then, after brunch and the first half of a losing game, reconvened at halftime on the stairway landing under Row M.

As usual, Culver passed around a flask. “Win or lose, you never lose with good brandy,” he said.

Drinking in the open, at one’s seat, isn’t permitted at Madison, where security guards prowl the aisles and grab anyone who flashes a bottle or a can.

Last year, they picked up one of Culver’s friends from New London, hustled him to the station house, and stripped him of $66. Just for opening a can of beer. He never got to drink it, but by 3 p.m. he was back in his seat.

“I only missed the third quarter,” he bragged at the postgame tailgate party, which, rain or shine, always follows the fifth quarter here.

A Wisconsin football fan can be identified as anyone who will gladly miss any third or fourth quarter if you’ll guarantee to have him here for the fifth quarter--when the UW band plays for 30 or 40 minutes after the game while going mad on the field and driving the spectators wild.

Nobody sits, and nobody leaves. For a concert with 200 imaginative rock musicians and 30,000 lead singers, the stadium is more nearly full after the game than it was at the start.

And the band plays on. It plays lying down or running around, or dancing over the field--the trombone section dancing with the tuba section or with the cheerleaders or pompon girls.

“We’re a very physical band,” said Leckrone, who has a reputation as one of college football’s most creative musical directors.

“We spend 75% of our time on physical conditioning at preseason rehearsals.”

At Camp Randall Stadium, built on the site of a Civil War training camp, Wisconsin students and alumni are very physical, too. Rocking the upper decks as the band plays, they dance with dates or neighbors, or by themselves, and sing or shout the familiar songs--”On Wisconsin,” “Beer Barrel Polka” and other drinking songs.

Everybody’s favorite seems to be an old beer commercial with new lyrics: “When you say Wis-con-sin, you’ve said it all!”

On opening day this season, they played and shouted that song eight or nine times.

Commenting on the phenomenon of a marching band with thousands of gyrating lead singers, UW sociologist Dan Parks said: “It’s a nonsensical outlet of a kind that appeals to most people. What many of us want most is something to do in common with other people.”

Leckrone sees it as all of that and more.

As he said: “I think we’re showing that a good time can be had by all as an alternative to the winning or losing of a game.

“Winning is important, sure, but the event can be more important. I’ve always doubted that people take winning and losing as seriously as we’re sometimes led to believe.”

If the man’s right, that could explain the 70,000 crowds for a team that doesn’t win much.

“But you do have to win some,” said Badger fan Kathryn Lindgren. “I remember how tough it was in the ‘60s.”

In those years, during one stretch, Wisconsin finished 2-7-1, 3-6-1, 0-9-1, 0-10 and 3-7.

The turning point was the 1969 arrival of a new athletic director, Elroy (Crazylegs) Hirsch, who in retirement this year is serving one last year as a consultant to the new athletic director, Ade Sponberg.

“Elroy Hirsch is a big name in Wisconsin,” said Jim Mott, UW’s sports information director. “This is where he started his career. (In the early ‘70s) he toured the state, reviving interest in Badger football, and he also toured the campus, visiting all the dorms and (fraternity) houses many times.”

Under new coaches, the team also began winning more often in the Hirsch era--not half the time, you may be sure, but often enough, apparently, considering the muscular musicianship of the school’s band.

Said Mott: “Attendance rose 5,000 a year, from 48,000 in ’69 to the 70,000 we have now.”

His first season as athletic director was the hardest for Hall of Famer Hirsch, a former Ram star. Going into the Iowa game in the fourth football weekend of 1969, Wisconsin’s 1967-68-69 record was a frustrating 0-22-1. And at the half, Iowa led, 17-0.

Astonishingly, the Badgers scored 23 points in the fourth quarter and pulled it out, 23-17.

“I headed right for State Street,” Hirsch recalls, naming a student-hangout thoroughfare.

There, back-slapping every student in sight, he bought a round for the drinkers at every bar.

Beer or brandy?

“Beer,” he said. “Brandy isn’t good for you.”

Tell that to the alumni.