Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Wisconsin loves its football

This is amusing.

As reported by the Wisconsin State Journal on March 28, 1906: "At 9:30 p.m., 20 students gathered at Mendota Court with shotguns and revolvers. In 15 minutes the entire student body seemed to be in the line shouting 'death to the faculty.' They marched first to Frederick Jackson Turner's house. 'When can we have football?' was shouted. 'When you can have a clean college game. It's been so rotten for the last 10 years that it is impossible to purge it,' Turner replied. His words were met with hisses and shouts of 'put him in the lake.' At Dean Birge's house, he said, 'I understand the sentiments of this crowd to be for football. I shall convey these sentiments to the faculty at the next meeting.'

"Students then marched around town gathering wooden sidewalks, fences, and burnable material, and lit a bonfire in the middle of campus. They fired guns into the air. They hung an effigy of Turner on Bascom Hill, and lit it and several more on fire. At 7 the next morning a stuffed figure representing the faculty still swung from Main Hall."


And now the city goes crazy over rowdiness on Halloween. Would today's students go heels if the university dropped the football program?

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