MADISON, Wis.
Supply China Jerseys . -- David Gilreath
never planned on becoming a Wisconsin Badger. Instead, he arrived for a visit
intent on reaffirming his commitment to Minnesota. The wide receiver prospect
attended high school 12 miles from the Metrodome and hadnt experienced a college
game anywhere else.Then, he witnessed the power of Camp Randall Stadium.You get
a sense of what college football is supposed to be like as far as the fans, said
Gilreath, who found himself looking into the stands as much as he watched
Wisconsin beat Penn State back in 2006. Being out there, it was pretty crazy,
seeing the Jump Around, seeing the wave they do, seeing the chants, how packed
it was. I wasnt used to that. I remember that being the main factor. That was
one of the main factors of saying Im going to Wisconsin -- the stadium.So it was
only fitting that four years later, Gilreath would be responsible for producing
one of the most memorable and loudest plays in the stadiums long history when he
returned the opening kickoff 97 yards for a touchdown against No. 1 Ohio State.
As the crowd of 81,194 erupted under the lights of a primetime matchup, the
ground shook beneath Gilreaths cleats. It felt, Gilreath said, like a movie
starring the players. They rode that emotion to a 31-18 upset victory, and
students stormed the field to share in the revelry with the team.I think it has
to be one of the best atmospheres in college football, Gilreath said. This is a
huge stage youre on, and fans are right on top of you. It overwhelms the other
players a little bit.The Xs and Os are important. Camp Randall Stadium, however,
could represent one of No. 8 Wisconsins biggest advantages when No. 2 Ohio State
visits Saturday night (8 p.m. ET, ABC). The Badgers playoff dreams are at stake,
and theyre listed as a 10.5-point underdog. But, as Gilreath or anyone else who
has played there will tell you, dont overlook the Camp Randall affect,
particularly at night.It was pretty nuts for a 3:30 kick, said Ohio State coach
Urban Meyer, whose last visit there was a 2012 overtime victory. Its going to be
loud -- really loud.Camp Randall Stadium, the fourth-oldest facility in the FBS,
provides a home-field advantage that is generally considered among the best in
the country. Since the start of the 2004 season, Wisconsin has compiled a 75-9
record there (.893 winning percentage). Among Power 5 programs, only Ohio State
(80-9, .899) has won a higher percentage of its home games in that time
frame.During big night games, when Camp Randall is the center of the nations
attention as it will be Saturday, the place is notably manic. Its so loud even
Jim Harbaugh was speechless back when he played at Michigan. And with all due
respect to Virginia Techs heavy metal entrance from Metallicas Enter Sandman or
Tennessees rendition of Rocky Top, nobody rocks like Wisconsin when Jump Around
blares through the stereo system.Come for the football, stay for the party and
even walk home through a Civil War camp. When you say Wis-con-sin, youve said it
all.Theres a game thats labeled homecoming, but every game is a homecoming, I
think, for people at Camp Randall, said Matt Lepay, in his 23rd season as the
Badgers football radio play-by-play announcer. Its a social gathering, and the
fact the team has been pretty good more often than not makes it that much
better. Its more than a football game that gets people there.?This is the
longest delay I have ever seen because of crowd noiseMichigan quarterback Jim
Harbaugh backed away from center, pointed toward a referee and placed his hands
on his hips, incredulous as boos rained down with strength and vitriol.It was
Oct. 4, 1986, and No. 4 Michigan was in town to face Wisconsin in the first
night game in Camp Randall Stadium history. The Badgers werent a particularly
good team, but damned if the 75,898 fans in attendance werent going to turn the
event into a raucous occasion.As Harbaugh drove Michigan in the third quarter
toward the north end zone and Wisconsins student section, the collective roar
reached an ear-splitting decibel level, to the point that Harbaugh claimed
teammates could not hear his signals. For 10 minutes, Harbaugh repeated the
process of crouching under center, walking away and then trying again, only to
complain to officials. It marked the second occasion that night in which he
delayed the game. Each time, the crowd grew more incensed.This is the longest
delay Ive ever seen because of crowd noise, an announcer said on the television
broadcast.Camp Randall Stadium has become known as one of the rowdiest venues in
the Big Ten, if not the country, because of a fan base that exudes passion --
even if that passion can occasionally manifest itself in detrimental ways.
Former Iowa coach Hayden Fry once called Camp Randall the worst place in the
world to take a visiting team to play, which occurred after he said eggs were
thrown at coaches and players, and beer and peppermint schnapps were poured on
the team as well.Still, the electric atmosphere that pings through the stadium
during big games is usually unforgettable, as it was 30 years ago, when Michigan
coach Bo Schembechler bemoaned the ridiculously loud noise and chastised the
entire Wisconsin crowd.I promise you, I will not allow the Michigan crowd to do
that, and they wont, he told reporters afterward. People who come into our
stadium are treated courteously.The incident was eerily similar to a November
game six years earlier, when Michigan quarterback John Wangler refused to snap
the ball inside Camp Randall because of excessive crowd noise. Seven times,
Wangler backed away from the line of scrimmage, as Michigan faced a
fourth-and-one at the Wisconsin 4-yard line.Following two warnings, referee
Glenn Fortin assessed Wisconsin a timeout on the third occasion. Then, he took
away the Badgers second and third timeouts. When those punishments failed,
Fortin handed out two delay-of-game penalties, moving the ball to the 2-yard
line and then the 1. Michigan scored the next play on a run from tailback Butch
Woolfolk.I was in the stands, former Wisconsin athletics director and Badgers
All-American receiver Pat Richter recalled. I remember seeing a friend of ours
come racing down the stairway and Im thinking, What the hell is he doing? He got
down around the fences behind the bench. He was hollering at Schembechler. He
was madder than the dickens.Only Bo could have gotten something like that. All
you need to do is warn the fans its too noisy. You know what youre going to get.
It was quite the scene.Even the first documented complaints of excessive crowd
noise at a college football game trace their roots back to Madison. According to
the David M. Nelson book The Anatomy of a Game: Football, the Rules and the Men
who Made the Game, famed Chicago Maroons coach Amos Alonzo Stagg claimed his
team didnt win a 1914 game at Randall Field because of overzealous fans.Chicagos
left end, John Vruwink, became rattled because several Wisconsin supporters were
cheering loudly with megaphones near the corner of the end zone. Instead of
holding a block for his fullback, he pulled into the backfield amid the hysteria
and collided heads with him. The game ended in a 0-0 tie, in what Nelson wrote,
may have been the first outdoors crowd-noise interference.After all these years,
some things never change.Kevin cranked that on, and the place went nutsRyan
Sondrups football career had ended prematurely because of an injury, and the
former Badgers tight end began his last school year yearning for a way to fill
the void. When he opted for a volunteer role with Wisconsins athletic marketing
department in 1998, he couldnt have known that search would spawn one of the
great traditions in college football.Sondrup, who spent three seasons on the
team, believed part of the game-day experience felt stale and inquired with his
bosses about how to enhance fan involvement. The response: Create a list of
ideas and get back to us. Several concepts fell by the wayside, but one that
seemed feasible to Sondrup was compiling a CD playlist to amp up the crowd.One
night at Wandos, a popular downtown bar and grill, Sondrup and a few friends on
the team began scrolling through the Jukebox. Up popped House of Pains 1992 hit
Jump Around, a song with a high-energy introduction that encouraged everyone to
-- what else? -- jump around.Eyebrows raised, and the group shared a collective
thought: Hey, this could be something.That was our big moment, our big
momentum-building idea to get the student section raucous, so to speak, Sondrup
said.Sondrup presented his playlist to Kevin Kluender, an assistant marketing
director at Wisconsin. Earlier in the season, Kluender had been searching for
the right entertainment combination before the fourth quarter began. The stadium
featured a primitive message board with a student section race, the dots ticking
frame-by-frame across the screen. Kluender would follow up by playing a random
song.But everything changed during Wisconsins only home night game that season
on Oct. 10, 1998, against Purdue. Boilermakers quarterback Drew Brees was in the
process of setting an NCAA passing record by completing 55 of 83 throws, and the
game had begun to drag on. After the third quarter, Kluender scanned Sondrups
playlist trying to liven up the fan base. He settled on Jump Around.My back was
sort of to the student section a little bit, Kluender said. I could see that
people are pointing and looking. I turned around and saw everyone jumping. It
just kind of looked like popcorn. You had never seen anything like that.Added
Sondrup: Kevin cranked that on, and the place went nuts.The stadium shook and
the press box swayed, infusing a new energy into Camp Randall. Wisconsin went on
to win the game 31-24 on its way to a Rose Bowl appearance.Kluender played the
song during Wisconsins final two home games, but it wasnt until the following
season when he realized what a gem the school had on its hands. Even during
nonconference blowouts against overmatched opponents, students stayed in their
seats just so they could bob their heads and hop up and down to Jump
Around.Controversy briefly followed in 2003, when Richter, then the athletics
director, asked for the song not to be played in the home opener against Akron
because the stadium was under construction, and he feared the shaking could be
dangerous. Outrage reached such high levels that Chancellor John D. Wiley was
forced to step in. He announced Jump Around could be played the next week during
a home game against UNLV after a study determined the building would remain
structurally sound.Man, you shouldve seen the people when the song didnt happen,
Richter said. All of a sudden, boos. I got emails and letters from people
saying, Its a right that we have. It didnt take long for the administration to
change it. I said, This is a good way to leverage some of the profanity that
will happen if you dont play Jump Around. The administration decided to bite the
bullet.In the years since, Jump Around has been cemented as a staple, alongside
renditions of Sweet Caroline and Build me up Buttercup. It has quickly become
considered one of the best traditions in college football, and Saturday will
mark the 91st consecutive home game in which Jump Around is played, providing an
energy jolt that is difficult to replicate elsewhere.You see other stadiums try
to do it, Sondrup said. Theyll play Jump Around, and you kind of laugh. To see
the student section embrace it, I think its that energy of Camp Randall. Theyre
the ones that took it and ran with it and made it what it is. Its just a great
place to play.There is certainly a mystiqueWhen Daniel Einstein overlays
sketches of Camp Randall Stadium with the area as it existed 152 years ago, a
historical significance surfaces that separates the edifice from every other in
college football.There, lining up perfectly in the student section on the fields
north side, is where a group of barracks was built for enlisted Union men during
the Civil War. The space for the stadiums luxury suites once served as a
hillside headquarters for Camp Randall military operations.When the football
players are marching down the field, they are following in the footsteps of the
military parade ground during the Civil War period, said Einstein, the historic
and cultural resources manager at the University of Wisconsin.Most people dont
have an awareness of the precise cohabitation of the present activities with the
Civil War activities. I wouldnt say that the level of awareness is very high.
But there is certainly a mystique.From 1861-65, roughly 70,000 enlisted men came
through the complex -- nearly as many people as what fills the stadium on game
days now. Camp Randall differed from many Civil War training grounds because it
was used temporarily as a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp. At the end of April
1862, 1,400 Confederate soldiers, captured at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee,
were brought back to Camp Randall. The roughly 140 who died in Madison from
battlefield injuries are buried at the northernmost Confederate cemetery in the
United States.Following the Civil War, the land again became the state
fairgrounds. When Gen. Ulysses S. Grant visited the site 15 years later, he
called the transformation a symbol of beating the spears of war into the
plowshares of peace.In 1893, veterans successfully lobbied to have the land
donated to the university as a memorial athletic site. Veterans settled on camp
instead of field to preserve the memory of the venue. Football was first played
at Camp Randall in 1895, and construction of the current stadium began in 1913.
The stadium became fully functional in 1917 and has increased in seating
capacity from 10,000 to 80,321. All the while, its connection to the past has
endured.A memorial arch was erected and dedicated in 1912 to the Civil War
veterans who enlisted from Wisconsin. The arch serves as the entrance to Camp
Randall Memorial Park -- a historic site listed on the National Register of
Historic Places -- as well as the entrance to Camp Randall Stadium for the
schools marching band on football Saturdays.Its not just a park, Einstein said.
Its a place where veterans returned. They actually came back for a 75th reunion.
This was guys in their 90s coming back to Camp Randall to remember the comrades
that died in that Civil War. It was a special place, and we ought to respect
it.Thats part of the mystery of the Wisconsin fan ... We get all these people to
do crazy thingsDevotion is 40,000 fans braving bitter cold and a three-hour
football game to stay for a 20-minute performance from the schools band so they
can participate in the largest Chicken Dance youve ever seen. Mike Leckrone has
witnessed the madness, known as The Fifth Quarter, up close for decades as
Wisconsins band director. Yet explaining the popularity of those postgame shows
remains elusive.Thats part of the mystery of the Wisconsin fan, Leckrone said.
We get all these people to do crazy things, and theyve done it for years and
years. I dont know that theyve ever been able to do anything quite like it
anywhere else in the country. People have called me and said, Tell me about this
Fifth Quarter.Wisconsin fans are very gregarious, and what we try to do is feed
on that and give them some things back that they can pick up on and then have
fun with us, too.Leckrone arrived in 1969 to serve as director of the schools
marching band and took over as director of the entire band in 1975 -- a role he
holds today at age 80. During the early years, the football team inspired little
confidence while in the midst of a 20-game winless streak. On-campus protests
during the Vietnam War meant few students were interested in wearing a uniform
and marching military style. But Leckrone, whose childhood fantasy was to lead a
Big Ten band down the field, never wavered in his enthusiasm while leading
postgame shows despite minimal interest.Curiosity started to pique during a
famous 1978 home football game against Oregon. The band had begun rotating
through a series of commercial jingles, including the Budweiser tune, Here Comes
the King, with a style imitative of a typical German band. Leckrone seized on
the opportunity after fans previously showed great interest in the Beer Barrel
Polka. With the help of his band, Leckrone convinced students to change the
lyrics from When you say Budweiser, youve said it all, to When you say
Wisconsin, youve said it all.During that Oregon game, he played the song on
multiple occasions and worked the crowd into a fervor, which coincided with a
Wisconsin comeback victory. The song became such a hit that the upper deck of
Camp Randall Stadium swayed when it was played, prompting then-athletics
director Elroy Hirsch to tell Leckrone not to play the song during
games.Instead, Leckrone had the public address speaker make an announcement that
it would not be played until five minutes after the game had completed to allow
concerned fans to exit, intentionally making a big fuss to spotlight his bands
postgame show. The momentum for the song led local sports writer Glenn Miller to
dub the performance The Fifth Quarter -- a name that has stuck ever since. The
shows became so popular in lean football seasons that Leckrone noted more fans
arrived at the end of the game than during.What Mike has done there through the
years means a lot to people with the game-day experience, said Lepay, the
longtime radio announcer. When you see the band, you see theyre having a good
time. Theyre getting involved. The fans see that, they know that, and they like
to have a lot of fun with it.Leckrone has continued to find ways to entertain
fans over the years, expanding the bands repertoire. He incorporated the Chicken
Dance after the schools crew coach, Randy Jablonic, returned from a trip to
Europe and suggested Leckrone play it at games. In the 1980s, several of his
band members began mimicking Pee Wee Hermans Tequila Dance, and the song quickly
found its way into the postgame performance. His biggest failure, he said, was a
rendition of the Macarena that students booed because they were fatigued of its
popularity in the 1990s.While Leckrone cant fully express why the bands
performance has become so important to fans, its role in enhancing the game-day
atmosphere has proven to be nearly as vital as the actual game.We have about 20
minutes of solid stuff that is just foolishness in a lot of ways, Leckrone said.
But its fun stuff.The party pulls into town again Saturday for a top-10 battle
with playoff implications, and football will only be half the fun. Welcome to
Camp Randall Stadium.
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as substitute Gerard Deulofeu levelled with a hard shot from a tight angle in
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MARBLEHEAD, Ohio -- A longtime Cleveland Indians fan says he didnt think twice
about giving up his plane seat to make sure former outfielder Kenny Lofton
arrived in time to throw out the ceremonial first pitch as this years World
Series began.Ken Kostal, of Marblehead, says he was waiting to board a delayed
flight from Los Angeles to Cleveland early Tuesday when he recognized Lofton,
the speedy outfielder Kostal had watched when he was a season-ticket holder in
the 1990s. When he overheard Lofton saying he wasnt sure hed get a seat on the
plane, Kostal offered his seat, and a gate agent made the ticket swap.It all
happened kind of fast, Kostal said, according to the Sandusky Register. I was
actually out there for the National Chili Cook-off in Reno, Nevada. I later went
to Los Angeles Innternational Airport to get on my plane.
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Kostal for his generosity on Wednesday.Kostal said his interaction with Lofton
was positive.He was very nice, Kostal said, according to the newspaper. I didnt
think twice about it. I was glad to give him my ticket.He also snapped a selfie
with Lofton, who did get to Cleveland and threw the first pitch before his
former team beat the Chicago Cubs 6-0.He loves the Indians and Cleveland,
Kostals wife, Diane, said, according to the Register. He grew up in that area.
If he thought he could to do something to help someone, hed do it.Information
from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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