Badger Tears

This is not the ending I was expecting. Bucky is sobbing on the streets of Pasadena. Somewhere Hubbard, Rosa, and Purdy are singing On Wisconsin off-key. All over the dairy state, cows are tipping themselves over in shock and dismay. Beer refuses to leave their taps. Oscar Mayer is blowing a dirge on the wiener whistle. The colors of cardinal and white walk around shrouded in black crepe. Lawry’s wants its steaks back.

I am disconsolate. I am angry. I just ate my cheesehead without the benefit of strong whiskey or any other lubricant. It went down as hard as the last second football spike ending a game without any time left on the clock.

Congratulations to Oregon. The last time an Oregon team won the Rose Bowl, America was several months away from entering World War I. The Czar was still running around Russia scooping up Fabergé eggs. The Ottomans still had an empire. And Iraq was not yet a country.

This Badger loss is my fault. Not the Jared Abbrederis fumble at the four minute mark of the fourth quarter. Not the questionable burning off of two time outs in the second half when neither, as it turned out, was really necessary. Not the fact that Montee Ball had three carries in the fourth quarter for NO YARDS. No, I take full responsibility for the loss: I, Mister Greenbushboy himself, was too damn lazy to go to the game and drink the beer, eat the hot dogs, wait in line to whizz, and listen to drunks around me question how Russell Wilson came to Wisconsin.

Every time I’ve sat my ever expanding keister down in the nose bleed section of the Rose Bowl, the Badgers were assured a victory. I was there in ’94, ’99, and 2000. Suddenly in my old age, I’ve become, like my exercise patterns: unreliable, lackadaisical, lethargic, slothful, and gaseous. In 2011, I decided to actually watch the Rose Bowl game in the comfort of a home with a 50 inch screen and I gobbled down food until it ran out in the third quarter. And what happened? Wisconsin lost to some team whose name shall never be mentioned in my presence.

This year, I went one better. The screen was the size of a mansion, there were enough bathrooms for a battalion, and the food service began the night before. And how did it end? We lost again. How can I call myself a Badger when obviously all I’ve been thinking about is my own self interest and my gut? Isn’t there a circle in Hell for reprobates and blackguards such as myself?

The next time Wisconsin has a quarterback the quality of Russell Wilson, I’ll be dead and won’t know about it anyway. Unless we have someone even half as good waiting in the wings come September of this year, the Badgers will end up at best playing in one of those toilet bowl games held before the New Year and who gives a crap about them? I fear that Wisconsin’s loss only portends what the Mayan Calendar has been warning us all along. The end is nigh.