B1G 2016: Wisconsin Traditions

Now one of the best things about college football is tradition. There is nothing quite like participating in traditions that are unique to your school. Your rivals may not get them. The origins of them may not make any sense. The school administration may have tried to stop them. Yet here they are, woven into the fabric of the experience that is college football.

Now Wisconsin has so many gameday traditions that I could write until next Thursday and still get told I missed one. The fact I'm not writing at length about the 5th Quarter or "On Wisconsin" is not because I don't view these as important traditions, but rather, I don't get paid enough have time to write a 5,000 word article at the moment. So when I decided to write a tradition article, I decided to focus on the three most talked about Wisconsin traditions, I'm not saying these are the three best traditions (although two of them certainly belong in that conversation), rather these are the three that move the needle the most. This is a Big Ten blog first and foremost, and I'm not going to entertain the masses with every single Wisconsin tradition. With that said all scores are based on the Speth System Tradition Analytics Score, whose formula will forever remain known to only me and may or may not have been part of the BCS formula. Thank God we got rid of that.

I was about seven rows under the 14 for the Huskers. Or a section and a half over from the 41 for the Badgers, whichever perspective you prefer. This was probably my favorite Jump Around ever and all the salt from the Nebraska fans complaining about Madison afterwords is still being used to season my fries. Yeah Badger fans were assholes after the game, but I got told Lavonte David was going to throw Russell WIlson like a ragdoll randomly by a passerby so maybe don't talk shit then lose by 31 in primetime. Anyway that's a different article entirely. The Jump Around tradition started innocently enough against Purdue (quite possibly their most important contribution to Big Ten football) in 1998. I find it amusing that of all the stuff I've forgotten, I can tell you Jump Around started against Purdue in 1998 off the top of my head. Wisconsin football has never been the same since. Except for one week in 2003, when the school was supposedly worried that with renovations going on, if Jump Around was played Camp Randall might actually collapse. Naturally when Jump Around didn't play against Akron, there was an uproar, because if there's one thing Wisconsinites know how to do it's protest. The administration ended up hiring a team of engineers due to the backlash to deem that in fact, Jump Around only makes opponent's seasons collapse, and not Camp Randall itself, even if it does register on the Richter scale at UW Geology department almost 2 miles away. In less than 20 years, Jump Around has become one of the most famous and well respected traditions in college football, with opposing teams regularly joining in. Especially when they're getting shut out apparently because Miami (OH) really got into it last year. I might be a homer here, but this and also this, among others, seem to back me up. I do have one gripe with Jump Around. Jumping up and down while usually intoxicated with metal bleachers literally right behind you gets rather painful around the fourth time you jump back into the bleacher.

Ahhhh a student section tradition that didn't catch on with the the rest of Camp Randall. Generally speaking this one gets started when section P shouts "eat shit", and section O shouts back "fuck you" before the whole student section gets involved. There is something to note here- Literally everyone over the age of 21 thinks this is the stupidest thing ever. Also of note- If you're not a Wisconsin fan and you try to tell us this, we will probably swear at you. Such is tradition. Seeing as it predates Jump Around to the dark days when it was more entertaining to shout profanities at each other than actually watch the product on the field it's not going anywhere. It does add a certain brash element to the Wisconsin fan base, and is a nod to our gleeful lack of self awareness. Then again, when you've only had one losing season in twenty years, who needs self awareness? Also studies show that those that swear are actually smarter. So not only is your football team losing, but your student section is dumber.

This one has mysterious roots. It is said that after the 2003 Gopher win at a stadium that doesn't even exist anymore, the respective state governments held a secret meeting. While details of what was actually discussed are murky, sources tend to believe the a treaty was hashed out. The major components of the treaty being that in exchange for not constantly going off about how grossly overrated the Twin Cities are by literally every person in Minnesota, Wisconsin would win every single game in the football rivalry. Personally I think Wisconsin got the better end of the deal, as we don't even have to abide by it steadfastly since your football team can't do anything to enforce the terms of said treaty. It seems to me that those in power in Minnesota are perfectly content with the Wisconsinites who choose to live in a frozen hell hole of a metropolis as us holding up our end of the bargain. So be it.

While this isn't a tradition, it's important that Big Ten fans are aware that this pile of footballs that totally looks like something entirely different is bigger than yours. The Badger Herald article is funnier than anything I can write.