Nebula said:
I had a good time in Madison. The locals did make me take two shots of whisky when we hit a diner for breakfast at 10:00 in the morning, and another guy by the stadium selling beer outside his house (a very reasonable one dollar per) said they'd be "hanging and smoking" at his house after the game and we were more than welcome to come by.
Oh yeah, and an old lady welcomed us the second we got there and to us she hoped we really enjoyed our experience in Madison, was thrilled to have us, and wished us good luck.
Buuut,,,,two extraordinarily drunk, obnoxious, and antagonizing Badger fans sat in the visitor section, and they were borderline insufferable.
You're doing this wrong, I think. Usually people write off their good experiences and focus on their 10 cumulative seconds of interaction with idiots as their model for the entire UW fanbase.
I'm being sarcastic, of course, and appreciate that someone in a thread about Badger fans is above circle jerking. I've been to over 30 games at Camp Randall and, while I would agree with many that, on the whole, it's not an inviting atmosphere for visitors, I've never seen any violence and I've never seen anything more aggressive than the bad guy chant that students like to do. One entire side of the stadium faces a row of student houses and visitors definitely face an unusual experience in entering on that side.
The original post in this thread is a great example of confirmation bias:
"
It didn't take long to have the "gentleman" in front of us standing up and waving his arms in our faces as Wisconsin scored."
To this person a fan cheering when his team scored was a.) a confirmation of a perception of an entire fan base and b.) an aggressive act. This tends to be how people perceive UW fans and I think it's very much based on preconceived notions, which I speculate come in part from sour OSU and Michigan fans canvassing the internet to warn people how awful all people in Wisconsin are. Two of my best friends went to Minnesota and returned to Madison for two games. Both times they were wearing bright yellow shirts (one of the games was a night game) and nothing more came of it than a few groups chanting at us.
Frankly, I don't believe most of the stories. I'd again concede that it's not an inviting atmosphere but I don't see how people find it to be hostile. I'm referring to Camp Randall so much because stories from visitors were where this recent reputation of the angry Badger fan stems from. Ultimately I'm inviting everybody to make their own minds up about the fan base because I find it sad that, in one year, it's gone from major excitement from both schools' supporters to a much murkier atmosphere.
