Badger Fanatics Know How to Paint the Town Red

They don’t make any plays, but they don’t miss any, either. They are Wisconsin football fans, and they are a rare breed, a group that is as big of heart as it is of voice. Also, of thirst.

When the Badgers became the first Big Ten Conference team to win consecutive Rose Bowls with their 17-9 afternoon of perseverance against Stanford Saturday, the Badger fans were there, full-hearted and full-throated. And, yes, many fully lubricated.

But the fact that they tend to imbibe a bit more than the average college football gathering should not be the only thing that is discussed in any story about them.

These people are like a Red Buttons comedy routine. When their team plays, they are there. When it rains, they are there. When it is 10 below zero, they are there. When it is time to make the annual trek to Pasadena to buy up all the tickets and fill the stadium with red-clad faithful and watch their team knock around the other guys who mostly come from places where they don’t have snow blowers, they are there.

They are loyal, fervent. Texas A&M; has its 12th Man. Army has its corps of cadets. Wisconsin has an entire state.

The Badgers are the only Division I football show in the state, and the Green Bay Packers are the only real competition for affection. Most fans feel equally comfortable painting things on their chest and going shirtless in the dead of the winter in either Lambeau Field or Camp Randall Stadium.

It’s not as if other states and other colleges don’t have ardent fan support, but Wisconsin fans are famous (notorious?) for raising that bar over the years.

It hasn’t always been pretty, it certainly has never been quiet nor dull.

Wisconsin plays in a stadium that seats nearly 80,000 and drew 77,527 for a game against Murray State and 75,807 the next week against Ball State earlier this season. They could schedule Southeastern Hairstyling School and draw 75,000. Wisconsin fans don’t get bored with bad teams or bad matchups and go to the beach. But then, they don’t have a beach to go to, unless you consider Lake Michigan in December.

In the ‘70s, when the Badgers weren’t very good, they still drew huge crowds, but the constant pain of losing prompted some unruly moments, such as the time the students started ripping off plastic seat covers and tossing them out of the stadium. That stopped after a number of people walking next to the stadium suffered cuts when struck. But some in the stands carried on with the wild behavior, passing random bodies, many of them unwilling to be passed, to the top of the huge stadium before throwing a dummy over the side. That always brought great cheers, but eventually was stopped, although not easily.

Then there was the day the Badgers were, uncharacteristically at that time, playing powerhouse Michigan dead even in Camp Randall. There was a controversial call as the Wolverines drove toward the goal. Wisconsin fans made such a racket that, despite repeated warnings from officials that their noise was keeping Michigan from hearing the snap call, the Badgers eventually were penalized a couple of times for delay of game. Even while their own players gestured and motioned and begged them to stop, the Badger fans would not back down. Nor would the officials. Inevitably, Michigan scored and went on to win.

Then there was the infamous postgame celebration in Camp Randall a few years ago in which a large group of fans was pushed forward onto a fence that broke, nearly suffocating some people.

So, the rap has frequently been bad, the negative reputation hard to overcome.

But the intensity of their fervor over the years has been rewarded. They have given and given to their teams, as they did in 1994, when they overran the Rose Bowl in their dozens of shades of Badger red and made a game against UCLA, whose home field is the Rose Bowl, an afternoon of Wisconsin home cooking. It was much the same last year, again against the Bruins. Both times, UCLA was seen as the better team. Both times, Wisconsin won.

The presence of Badger fans was a bit tougher to detect here Saturday, since Stanford’s color is also red.

But when it was over, when Wisconsin’s Ben Herbert--whose defensive position is listed as “rush”--did just that on Stanford’s last-chance, fourth-down play that ended with Stanford’s Todd Husak flat on his face, there was no problem identifying the Badger faithful.

They swayed and rocked from midfield on the west side all the way around the north end. They erupted when Coach Barry Alvarez got the game trophy, and they went berserk when star Ron Dayne said, from the same postgame platform, that Wisconsin fans deserved much of the credit.

Soon, they were singing in full voice, arms joined, row after row, the famed “Varsity.” The “U Rah Rah Wisconsin” reverberated through the stadium. Then veteran player Casey Ribach carried the trophy to them, holding it for them in such a way that they knew that he knew, and all of his teammates knew, that they owned a piece of this.

Soon, it was time for the Budweiser song. In the rowdy days of chair-tossing and fan-passing, the lyric was a robust: “When you say Budweiser, you’ve said it all.” Because of all that beer drinking represented to the university powers, that lyric was banned, but not the song, nor the volume with which it is sung:

“When you say WIS-CON-SIN, you’ve said it all.”

As they always do, even when they lose, the Wisconsin fans stayed in their seats and partied long after the last celebrating Badger player had left the field. Some of the fans even wore the cheeseheads of Wisconsin fame, the ones that not only symbolize the famous state product, but also have circular slots in each corner of the triangle the exact size of a beer can.

When you say WIS-CON-SIN FOOTBALL FAN, you’ve said it all.