The Land of Milk and Honey : Pro football: Wisconsin is becoming a training paradise for NFL teams, who love the weather--and the people.

For the New Orleans Saints, it wasn’t only the heat that ruined football practice in Louisiana each summer. It wasn’t even the humidity.

“It was the isolation,” Saint President Jim Finks recalls. “We were 500 miles from the nearest NFL team. We couldn’t get anybody to come down and scrimmage us.”

And so, last year, the Saints moved their summer training camp from Hammond, La., to La Crosse, Wis.

This year, the Kansas City Chiefs closed down another secluded pro camp in Liberty, Mo.--their steamy summer home for 28 years--and moved, for the same reason, to River Falls, Wis.

America’s Dairyland, the verdant, sprawling state of Wisconsin, is suddenly something more.

Five NFL clubs are spending late July and early August in or near the state, leading the citizenry to call it the NFL’s Wisconsin Division.

“The Packers were first,” says Green Bay President Bob Harlan, whose team practices at its training complex near Lambeau Field and uses the dorm and dining facilities at St. Norbert College in De Pere, a Green Bay suburb.

“Then, eight years ago, the Chicago Bears joined us in Platteville. And besides the Saints and Chiefs, you have the Minnesota Vikings across the state line in Mankato (Minn.).

“With the new 80-player (roster) limits, nobody can run a training camp properly if you can’t practice against other teams, and in Wisconsin these days you can always find somebody to practice against.”

The NFL’s summer trend of the 1990s--inter-camp practices and scrimmages--helps explain the confluence of the Chiefs, Saints and Bears.

But why Wisconsin?

“The weather and the people are both friendlier in Wisconsin,” Bear President Michael B. McCaskey said the other day in the coolness of a sunny afternoon as the Bears worked out.

“But you couldn’t dig in at a place like Platteville if they didn’t have NFL facilities. Take a little thing like grass. This is a dedicated agricultural community. They know how to grow lush, green grass.

“We’re a team that doesn’t want to practice or play in any domes. God meant football to be played on grass.”

The Bears’ three turf fields were originally put in for the amusement of students at the University of Wisconsin Platteville.

The Saints and Chiefs say they have found the same NFL resources--and the same compatible weather and companionable people--at UW La Crosse and UW River Falls.

There are 12 universities in the state-wide University of Wisconsin system--plus the flagship campus at Madison--and the NFL has begun to anticipate the time when its Wisconsin Division will embrace even more teams. Possibly three or four more.

“I enthusiastically recommend Wisconsin to all,” said Kansas City President Carl Peterson.

On behalf of the state university system, Steve Zielke, UW Platteville’s assistant chancellor, actively pursues other NFL teams for other UW institutions, buttonholing team owners at league meetings.

“We have six more colleges here that would be ideal for pro football camps,” Zielke said, naming Kenosha’s Carthage College, a private school, and UW sites at Whitewater, Oshkosh, Stevens Point, Eau Claire and Superior.

“They each have everything you want--three to five football fields, ample locker room space, modern dining facilities and good residence halls.”

Why does Wisconsin have so many state universities?

“Education is important to the people here,” said a UW River Falls financial vice president, Mary Halada. “Most of the campuses were laid out in the 1960s when there was a boom in college-age students.

“Enrollment is held to about 140,000 now, for the whole system, so we won’t overextend. The (student bodies) range from 2,200 at UW Superior to 8,500 at La Crosse. There are about 40,000 students at Madison.”

Why do UW campuses want the pros around?

“To maximize our facilities during the (summer),” Halada said. “And to get some attention in the state, and the rest of the (Midwest). With an NFL team on campus, (the school) only aims to break even financially--but a lot of money changes hands.

“Each team hires (an average of 100) students to work in the residence halls, dining halls and other places. And each team creates six to eight student internships. All that helps campus morale.

“Financially, the downtown communities benefit the most from the (pro clubs). The state Department of Tourism estimates the (annual) inflow at $1 million to $1.5 million for each community with an NFL camp.”

That’s upward of $5 million, heading for $10 million or more if there eventually is an eight- or 10-team Wisconsin Division.

OF TROUT STREAMS, CEMETERIES AND PARADES

One scenic difference between UW River Falls and UW Platteville--or USC or UCLA--is that a trout stream winds gracefully through the River Falls campus.

“Fishermen tell me it’s one of the two best trout streams in the (Midwest),” said Kansas City’s Peterson. “And it’s certainly one of the prettiest. Our players have to cross it to get from their dorms to practice.”

River Falls otherwise is a typically pleasant Midwestern town with a lot of green grass and leafy trees.

“They let you park free for 12 minutes in greater downtown River Falls,” said a Chief spokesman, Bob Moore.

“Movies are only $2--and they change every Thursday night.”

The state’s 12 UW towns and their campuses are basically similar, though occasionally distinctive. For example, La Crosse is a Mississippi River town that’s five times bigger than River Falls, or even Platteville, and boasts of more bars and taverns than any other U.S. city of 50,000 or under.

Most Wisconsin Division campuses are low-lying, with a lot of blond-brick construction--it’s what made Milwaukee the Cream City--until you get to Mankato. There, all of a sudden, a pair of 12-story towers dwarf the Vikings’ practice fields.

Mankato is in the University of Minnesota system.

“A good thing about this area is that for all of us--the Vikings and also the (Saints and Chiefs)--it’s easy in and out of the Minneapolis airport,” Viking spokesman Merrill Swanson said.

River Falls, in fact, is closer than Mankato to Minneapolis.

The tourist pushing south along the Mississippi to Platteville learns that the elegant trout stream of River Falls is long gone. Instead, UW Platteville is built around a cemetery.

The Bears live in dorms on one side of Greenwood Cemetery and circle it to reach their practice fields on the other side. Distances are such--both in Platteville and River Falls--that the players travel everywhere by scooter, car or bicycle, unlike the Saints at La Crosse, where everything is so close that the players move around on foot.

Greenwood Cemetery dates to the 1860s.

“It was built for the Civil War,” said Harold Hutcheson, retired UW Platteville vice chancellor, calling attention to the anomaly of some of the newer gravestones--where date of birth is prominently inscribed, but not date of death, pending departure.

“Platteville began as a teachers’ college many years ago, and many miles from Greenwood,” Hutcheson said.

“The state owned the land out that way, and, as the school expanded, finally got there and built around it.”

Said education professor Dolores Hutcheson: “Platteville students tell their friends that they live in a cemetery. I imagine the Bears do, too.”

They do.

Most of the living, including the Bears, were attracted to Wisconsin by the climate and the state’s industrious populace.

That isn’t to say that it never rains on the players. And it can be hot, but median summer temperatures are comparatively mild.

Of the Chiefs’ first day in Wisconsin, Peterson said: “It was 90--very unusual for River Falls--and the River Falls people were embarrassed. I said: ‘Not to worry. It’s 107 where we came from. We couldn’t have practiced.’ ”

At his last training camp, Peterson said, heat and humidity were measured with what Missourians call a “wet-bulb index.”

“You twirl a thermometer on a string to get the opposite of the wind-chill factor,” he said. “Not that you really want to know.”

In the Wisconsin Division, everybody talks about the people as well as weather.

“These are hard-working people,” said UW Platteville’s Zielke. “They take pride in what they do. Their work ethic is very high.”

On the Bears’ practice field, club owner McCaskey agreed.

“The (UW) staff is outstanding,” he said. “A football team has many needs, but for eight straight years the university people here have jumped to honor any reasonable request--diet, beds, fields, stadium, crowd control, you name it.”

Last month at River Falls, almost all of the 9,500 residents turned out to welcome the Chiefs to town with a parade down Main Street--the athletes riding in fire trucks and antique convertible cars.

“The city only asked one thing,” Peterson said. “They wanted the players to wear their Kansas City jerseys with names and numbers--so they’d know for whom they were cheering. We were glad to oblige.”

FOR PLATTEVILLE FANS, EVERY DAY IS PICNIC DAY

At old Olympia in Greece 2,500 years ago, the early Olympic Games were held in a stadium without seats or benches for the spectators. There, the playing field was the focal point of an outdoor amphitheater that can be seen to this day.

And there, on the low, green hills that rise gently from the edges of the field, the first Olympic crowds sat on the grass and looked down at the athletes.

Today it’s much the same at Platteville, where Mike Ditka, the gruff Bear coach, opens all practices to all comers.

Admission each day is free.

And each day, Ditka’s players, grunting and hitting down there on the field, are closely watched from the surrounding hillside by hundreds--sometimes thousands--of Wisconsin sports fans, most of them sitting or standing around in shorts, lightweight tops and Bear caps.

In Platteville’s big, natural amphitheater, every day is Picnic Day. The fans stroll in, carrying picnic blankets and baskets of food and beverages, or, possibly, they patronize the pizza stands that spring up each morning on the ridges of the hills.

In the Wisconsin Division, clearly, training camp is a two-way street. The players might be here to toughen up for the season, but in a community such as this, where celebrity sightings are rare, NFL players are entertainers, too.

“Platteville has been good to us, but I think we’ve been good to Platteville,” Ditkasaid.

“I think we’ve given something back.”