Tired of Seeing Red

"We don't just want to beat them; we want to humiliate them."

The words of one of the University of Wisconsin defensemen in the morning paper on the day before the first game of the NCAA quarterfinals against Harvard pretty much expressed the sentiments of the entire city of Madison.

The red-plumed inhabitants--you won't see more red anywhere this side of Santa's belly--of this dumpy metropolis have little alternative to their beloved hockey team for excitement, especially after the farm implement show closes down. For one thing, the bars shut their doors at 12:30. After that you can go to sleep, or you can wait for the cows to come home.

And so they go to hockey games. And they tell you how their learn is the greatest in the world, and how their coach is the greatest in the world, and how they are the greatest fans in the world.

There are a lot of cocky Badgers in this town.

On the first night in the city where Oscar Mayer never wished to be, my faithful companion--Lloyd Perlmutter, the student Sports Information Assistant and the voice of Bright Center--and I climbed into a Badger cab (after a quick perusal of the cab companies in the phone book, we had decided we would ride on the Badger's back or we would walk).

The cab driver, a very perceptive fellow, immediately recognized us as out-of-towners. We had nary a red article about our persons.

"So you guys are from Harvard?" he droned.

"Uh, yeah, that's right," Lloyd replied.

"Ready to get killed?" the cabbie smirked. Kiss your big tip goodbye, buddy.

And that was only the beginning. We get to the restaurant and the owner popped out with: "Hey, are you guys going to give us a good game?" Lloyd gave him a look.

On Saturday, I arrived at the rink, and outside the main entrance, a girl in a blue coat (I still can't figure that out) was hawking her wares, which turned out to be information sheets on pre-arranged charter fights to Providence for the NCAA semi-finals and finals the following weekend. In big letters at the top they said. "HURRY--FILLING FAST!"

There I was standing in this funny time zone outside the Dane County Memorial Coliseum all excited about the Harvard-Wisconsin series that's about to begin, and the other guys are already on their way to Providence.

There are a lot of cocky Badgers in this town.

Once inside the Coliseum, I was surrounded by a bunch of red-cloaked clones, complete with red cowboy hats decorated with red Badger buttons. They filled up the Coliseum seats to form one big red bowl around the rink.

Before the game began, the PA announcer introduced the two teams. After calling Harvard a squad which valiantly made it into Wisconsin, a team, "that bottles up sports and saves them to water the Ivy vines." The redcoats loved that one.

Although the Wisconsin hockey team did knock the Crimson out of the playoffs by a considerable margin (10-4 in the two-game series), and the fans adored nearly every minute, the Harvard hockey team certainly wasn't humiliated in Madison.

And for a team that at one point in the year was 5-10-1 and about as far from an ECAC playoff play off spot as the distance from Boston to Madison, that truly says it all.