The Badgers lost a 28–27 heartbreaker to Oregon in the 2020 Rose Bowl. Bryce Richter

When the Badgers host the Oregon Ducks on November 16 at Camp Randall Stadium, they will be welcoming a fresh face to the Big Ten Conference. But these football programs are already familiar foes, having first faced off in 1977 and last competed at the Rose Bowl in both 2012 and 2020.

This year’s game will be a rubber match of sorts: the all-time series is tied 3–3, with the Badgers winning the first three affairs and the Ducks prevailing in the past three. The average scoring margin over the six matchups? Five points.

For Wisconsin, that’s meant thrilling but heartbreaking losses in Pasadena. You may remember the 2012 game as the Russell Wilson MSx’13 Rose Bowl. The transfer quarterback electrified the program in his lone season as a Badger, leading the highest-scoring offense in the Big Ten. Oregon’s offense ranked third in the country, so it was no surprise when these juggernauts combined for 83 points and broke the Rose Bowl scoring record. The Badgers led 38–35 entering the fourth quarter, but the Ducks ran off 10 unanswered points to secure their first Rose Bowl win.

The teams wouldn’t meet again until the 2020 Rose Bowl, which had a similar result. Wisconsin’s 28–27 loss marked its fourth Rose Bowl defeat in a decade, all by a touchdown or less. The highlight was Aron Cruickshank x’22’s 95-yard kick return — the second-longest scoring play in Rose Bowl history. Jonathan Taylor x’21 led the Badgers with more than 100 yards from scrimmage, but four team turnovers ultimately doomed Wisconsin.

You have to go all the way back to September 9, 2000, to find better days for the Badgers in this matchup. Coming off consecutive Rose Bowl wins, Wisconsin lost its Heisman running back Ron Dayne ’17 to the NFL and 26 other players to suspension for unadvertised shoe-store discounts. But no matter: Michael Bennett x’02 rushed for a whopping 290 yards to lead the Badgers to a 27–23 win over the Ducks in Madison. (Quarterback Brooks Bollinger ’03 had to complete just five passes for 65 yards.)

The Big Ten welcomed three other programs to its ranks this year: USC, Washington, and UCLA. But Oregon is the only new member visiting Camp Randall in 2024. And that leads us to one last trend that we hope sticks: the Badgers, at press time, are undefeated at home against the Ducks.

University Square as it looked in the 1980s, when its lineup included a B. Dalton bookstore and a copy shop. University Archives

In May 1975, the UW community became the center of Madison’s cinematic universe with the opening of the University Square Four: “Madison’s 1st Four-Theatre Entertainment Center,” according to ads. Patrons could go to just one address — the corner of University Avenue and Park Street — and have their choice of four different films.

A newspaper ad for the theater’s opening. University Archives

Or rather three films, on the day the theater opened. Screens one and two both showed Gone in 60 Seconds, while three had Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and four had Chinatown. Not everyone was upbeat about the opening. Projectionists Local 251 picketed in front of the doors, asking for higher pay from U Square Four’s owner, American Multi-Cinema (AMC). AMC responded that U Square was fully automated and so didn’t need full-time projectionists. But in spite of the unpromising start, U Square Four lasted 30 years.

The University Square shopping center contained more than a movie theater, of course. Its single story covered 60,000 square feet, taking up much of the south side of the 700 block of University Avenue. It hosted the Discount Den (later just the Den); it was the original home for Madhatter bar; and it was the longest-lived of the many locations for Paisan’s Italian restaurant.

In 2001, U Square’s ownership announced a plan to redevelop the old shopping center, replacing it with a multistory structure that includes an apartment building (The Lucky) and UW offices. It took a few years for that plan to become a reality, but in 2006, U Square closed. The Den shut down in 2005. Madhatter moved to West Gorham, where it lasted another decade. Paisan’s moved to West Wilson, where it kept going until 2022.

But the theater had nowhere to go. Perhaps it was the revenge of Projectionists Local 251.

Quarterback Darrell Bevell made the biggest — and unlikeliest — play. Jeff Miller

Thirty years ago, the Wisconsin Badgers returned to the Rose Bowl after a three-decade drought and three prior winless appearances. They clinched the bid after defeating Michigan State at the Coca-Cola Classic in Tokyo and securing a 9–1–1 record. In just four years, head coach Barry Alvarez had miraculously transformed the floundering program he inherited. There was just one thing left to do.

If you were too young to watch the 1994 Rose Bowl (like this author) or simply want to relive the glory, you can find a video on YouTube. Badger fans who invaded Pasadena coined the phrase “Camp Randall West” as they turned Rose Bowl Stadium into a sea of red — despite playing the UCLA Bruins on their home turf.

The video transports you back to the ’90s: the less-than-high-definition footage; the players’ comically large shoulder pads; the UW’s starting quarterback, Darrell Bevell ’96, also serving on special teams as the holder. But on the whole, the game action — grinding yet thrilling — wouldn’t feel entirely out of place as a Big Ten slugfest today. (And welcome to the Big Ten, UCLA.)

Before there was Ron Dayne ’17, there was Brent Moss x’95. And the Badgers rode their MVP running back in the first half, amassing more than 100 rushing yards and taking a convincing 14–3 lead. But in the second half, the Bruins seized the momentum with long drive after long drive. They likely would have taken the lead if not for six turnovers, including four costly fumbles in the final two quarters.

The game’s defining play came with 10 minutes left and the Badgers clinging to a 14–10 lead. With the pocket collapsing around him, the normally slow-footed Bevell scrambled to his left, juked a defensive back to the ground, and shuffled 21 yards along the sidelines into the end zone. Not even the TV announcer could contain his laughter on the unlikely call, as Bevell threw his arms into the air in celebration: “That blazing speed takes him into the end zone!”

Still, the Bruins pulled within five and returned to the red zone with a chance to steal the game. Inexplicably, with 15 seconds left and no time-outs, UCLA quarterback Wayne Cook dashed up the middle for a few yards, allowing the clock to expire. Camp Randall West erupted. The final score: 21–16.

For a long-suffering fan base that had just endured 23 losing seasons in 29 years, the 1994 Rose Bowl marked a proud new era of Badger athletics that lasts to this day.

Ted Odell stirs up a 250-pound batch of his cookie batter in this 1973 photo from the Daily Cardinal. UW Archives (James Korger)

UW–Madison graduates from the 1960s to the early 1990s might remember a hefty, healthy snack available in local food co-ops called the Guerrilla Cookie. When its eccentric baker, Ted Odell ’64, stopped making the treats around 1990 or 1991, zealous fans tried to re-create the recipe, which Odell kept a closely guarded secret. Most assumed he had taken it to his grave when he passed away in 2021.

Perhaps the most impassioned baker, Karen McKim ’75, MA’77, dedicated a blog to the topic and tried more than 75 recipes. Dave Denison ’82, a former employee of Odell’s (and, full disclosure, this writer’s brother), wrote a lengthy piece in the September 2023 Baffler magazine about the cookie, its creator, and a futile quest to find the recipe. Denison was surprised this past April to hear from someone who actually had the original recipe.

That someone was Steve Apfelbaum, president of the board of the Southern Wisconsin Land Conservancy. SWLC manages the nonprofit Three Waters Reserve, a natural area and event center in Brodhead, Wisconsin, which hosts events such as corporate retreats, parties, and wedding receptions to support conservation efforts.

When Odell passed away, he bequeathed his land to the reserve, which had once been his family’s farm before it was sold in 1925 and converted into a golf course. Odell’s lifelong dream was to see the land returned to a more natural state. He helped SWLC buy the property and quietly gave the reserve his coveted recipe about a year before he died. “He wanted the cookies to go to a good cause,” says Apfelbaum. “He was very mission-oriented, and he wanted them to go to a conservation/education mission.”

The reserve’s chef, John Marks, and his staff re-created the cookie, painstakingly determining the original brands of ingredients that Odell used. Three Waters began selling the original-recipe cookies, as well as some modernized variations, this past spring.

A hefty, healthy snack. Andy Manis for Wisconsin State Journal

“We’d love to sell a lot of cookies, because it will finance a lot of happy birds and happy plants and happy butterflies,” says Apfelbaum.

Inspired by the Guerrilla Cookie, Three Waters is also developing what it calls the Climate Cookie, which will use flour made from native grass seeds such as Virginia wild rye. The native perennial will not require tilling the soil, fertilizer, or pesticides, taking Odell’s environmental ethos to the next level. A national chain will stock it, and a portion of sales will generate royalties for conservation. “Ted was so excited when he realized that the Climate Cookie could start a whole new line of foods derived from native ecosystems,” Apfelbaum says.

In the Baffler article, Denison revealed that Odell’s original intentions for his bakery involved a center that would provide nutritional education to children and donate its profits to worthy causes. Sadly, many of Odell’s later years were spent in frustration because he couldn’t find anyone who shared his dream.

No doubt he is resting peacefully now that his vision is fulfilled at last — and on a scale even greater than he imagined.

Deceptive political campaign ads, circa 1960: partisans for Richard Nixon marched at the UW Homecoming game showing support for John Kennedy … to stay in the Senate. UW Archives

In the fall of 1960, a narrowly divided United States was careening toward a bitter presidential election. Democrat John Kennedy and Republican Richard Nixon vied for support in a race that came down to less than two-tenths of a percentage point difference — Kennedy carried 49.72 percent of the national popular vote, while Nixon had 49.55 percent. UW students got caught up in that tight race.

Kennedy worked hard to appeal to campus. He spoke to more than 12,000 students at the Wisconsin Field House in late October, less than two weeks before the vote. Bill Whitford ’61 of the Young Democrats declared approvingly that Kennedy was “devoted to foresight, not hindsight.” The conservative student publication Insight and Outlook disagreed — it said that Kennedy would “lead the ship of state into its rendezvous with bankruptcy.” (Insight and Outlook remained sour on Kennedy. After he was assassinated, it conceded that he had been “warm and friendly,” in an otherwise ungenerous obituary; Kennedy, it said, was “not an exceptionally able chief executive” who “had failed even in what he thought his mission to be.”)

That year’s election fell on November 8, and Homecoming was November 5. During the UW’s annual football festival, partisans put their allegiance on display. Nixon supporters trolled the Kennedy campaign along the sidelines at Camp Randall — presumably suggesting that voters keep Kennedy in the Senate by electing Nixon president.

Ultimately, the Badgers carrying this sign were disappointed. Nixon won Wisconsin, but Kennedy ended up in the White House. Further, Northwestern won the Homecoming game, beating the Badgers 21–0.

UW Archives

UW–Madison has been publishing an alumni magazine for 125 years — and may we offer a suggestion for celebrating our big anniversary? Reading! Below is a selection of popular articles about UW people, places, sports, research, history, and traditions, organized by category so you can easily locate your favorite Badger subjects. And for our superfans (we know you’re out there), here’s a link to archival issues stretching all the way back to October 1899.

BADGER HISTORY AND TRADITIONS

Seven State Street Stalwarts

Amid constant change, these classic businesses have lasted more than half a century.

If You Want to Be a Badger

There are a few things that every UW–Madison grad should know. Do you make the grade?

Creating the Badger Brand

The quirky origins of the UW’s world-famous logos

The Speech That Launched Your Life

Relive the UW’s wisest commencement addresses.

Terrace Chairs

The sunburst design is one of the UW’s most recognizable symbols.

The sunburst Terrace chair design was implemented in 1981. Jeff Miller

Surprising Stories from UW Archives

These unusual artifacts shine a light on campus history, from lost traditions to lesser-known heroes.

The Millennia before UW–Madison

How the First Nations Cultural Landscape Tour became a unique campus institution

The Concerts You Never Forget

These campus-area shows have passed into UW–Madison mythology.

UW Mysteries, Secrets, and Hidden Places

Join us on a tour of secluded spots that few have ever seen.

How Badgers Eat

A history of UW cuisine

How Well Do You Know UW–Madison?

Test your knowledge in a 175th anniversary quiz.

Twenty-Five Years of “Jump Around”

The synchronized dance break during Wisconsin football games is a cherished ritual. Here’s why.

Bucky Badger Push-Ups

Read our definitive account of how and when the tradition began.

Forward March

The UW Band’s set list has evolved with the times.

Abraham Lincoln Statue

A hop onto Abe’s lap is a high point of any UW commencement weekend.

A visit with the Abe Lincoln statue is a high point of any UW commencement weekend. Jeff Miller

The Beloved Badger Bash

The pregame party has grown from low-key to high-powered.

Statue of Liberty 3.0

The rise, fall, and rise of a beloved UW tradition

Babcock Hall Ice Cream

The legendary scoops are a student staple as well as a tourist attraction.

ATHLETIC ACHIEVEMENTS

The Best of Barry Alvarez

Set to retire, the athletic director picks his favorite moments from a legendary Badger career.

Badgers at the Buzzer!

Legendary UW sporting events that came down to the wire

Hockey Dynasty

The UW women’s team makes history, again and again.

Dana Rettke and Volleyball: Meant for Each Other

Would you believe the UW star once loved a different sport?

The Comeback Coach

Kelly Sheffield has turned a struggling UW volleyball program into an NCAA powerhouse.

I’m Going to Be Intense

How head coach Luke Fickell will transform Badger football

A Story of Almosts

Lee Kemp ’79, MBA’83 is the greatest wrestler you’ve never heard of.

Coach of the Year

Greg Gard has overcome adversity to lead Badger men’s basketball to new heights.

So You Think You Know Ron Dayne?

There’s more to the UW’s legendary running back than most people realize.

Gwen Jorgensen

The triathlete takes a roundabout road to the Rio Olympics.

Six Lessons from the Rose Bowl

We went to cover a football game and discovered a community. 

AMAZING ALUMNI

From Wisconsin, With Humor

With The Manitowoc Minute, Charlie Berens lets the world in on the state’s inside jokes.

Not Your Grandmother’s Miss America

Grace Stanke ’23 brings Wisconsin nice and nuclear know-how to an American tradition.

2023 Miss America Grace Stanke majored in nuclear engineering at UW–Madison. Althea Dotzour

Why the Doctor Has Green Hair

David Margolis MD’89 combines his passion for the Milwaukee Bucks with his work as a pediatric oncologist.

The One and Only Andre De Shields

The Tony–winning Broadway star forged his artistic identity at UW–Madison.

The Teachings of Plants

Robin Wall Kimmerer MS’78, PhD’83 braids Western science and Indigenous knowledge. into a vision for a sustainable future.

A Moviemaker on a Mission

With singular intensity, Michael Mann ’65 pits loners against the powers that be.

These Boots Were Made for History

Retrace the steps of UW limnologist Harriet Bell Merrill 1890, who defied the doubters to conduct pioneering fieldwork in South America.

At UW–Madison, Mary Hinkson discovered the science of movement as well as some of the complicated realities of what it means to be black in America. UW Archives S16295

Dance, Dance Revolutionary

Before she was a world-leading dancer, Mary Hinkson ’46, MS’47 learned to thrive in a segregated Madison.

Finding a Voice, against All Odds

The UW Odyssey Project empowers nontraditional students to speak up and pursue their dreams.

 UW RESEARCH IN ACTION

A Hero Comes Home

The UW’s MIA Project collaborates with the Department of Defense to return the remains of a World War II pilot missing for 75 years.

Progress on Alzheimer’s Disease

According to UW geriatrician Nathaniel Chin ’06, MD’10, “We are on a trajectory for prevention.”

Earth’s Bright Future

Despite bleak environmental news, the UW’s Nelson Institute finds reasons to hope.

Psychedelic Wonder Drugs

UW–Madison leads the way in a potentially transformative field of medicine.

Fixing the Future

UW researchers offer reasons for hope.

The Truth in Our Genes

UW researchers have new tools for explaining who we are and improving our lives.

The Quest for a Kinder Cure

Paul Sondel ’71, PhD’75 searches for the most effective, least disruptive way to end childhood cancers.

CHALLENGING SUBJECTS

The 1970 bombing of Sterling Hall was the most destructive act of domestic terrorism the nation had yet seen. UW Archives

The Blast That Changed Everything

A 50-year perspective on the Sterling Hall bombing from alumni who lived through it.

Hard Truth

NFL star Chris Borland walked away from football to protect his brain — and to educate others.

How the Humanities Building Went Wrong

From the start, problems plagued a piece of architecture that could have been great.

Looking Back to Move Forward

UW–Madison grapples with the prejudice in its past.

THEME ISSUES

The Future Issue

The Women’s Issue

The List Issue

A classic offering from Dotty Dumpling’s Dowry, served with a heaping side of nostalgia. Bryce Richter

Asking a Badger to pick the best burger is like forcing a parent to choose a favorite child. There are too many classic spots by the UW–Madison campus, too many fond memories stored inside their walls. Instead, I decided to revisit four favorites, each hamburger served with a heaping side of nostalgia.

My journey starts in the intimate booths of Dotty Dumpling’s Dowry. I order the best-selling Melting Pot, a six-ounce patty topped with cheddar, Swiss, and provolone cheeses; smoked bacon; and English garlic sauce on a fresh-baked seeded bun. The plated Melting Pot lives up to its name, with the cheese trifecta dripping over the edge of the burger. The medium-pink beef bursts with flavor, but the rich fixings provide the memorable, mouthwatering punch. It only takes one taste to realize why Dotty’s has been a Madison staple for 50 years.

A trek up State Street leads me to the old-timey Plaza Tavern and its famed Plazaburger. The quarter-pound sensation, which has sold in the millions since its 1962 debut, is all about the white sauce. You can taste sour cream and mayo in the mix, but the rest is classified. My $7 order is prepared on a small grill behind the bar, smothered in the special sauce, and served on a starchy whole wheat bun. I’m reminded instantly that there’s no other bite like it.

Next is the Nitty Gritty, the “Official Birthday Place.” My special day isn’t for a couple weeks, so a free drink and souvenir mug aren’t on the menu. But there’s always the award-winning Gritty Burger. The standard six-ounce patty is served medium well on a honey wheat sesame seed bun. It’s the bulkiest burger of the bunch, with char flavor reminiscent of backyard grilling. The Gritty Sauce, while secret, smacks of Thousand Island. It’s a satisfying meal, even on the 364 days that aren’t your birthday.

And at the Memorial Union’s Der Rathskeller, I order the Signature Stacked Burger — a double quarter-pounder with American cheese. It’s a worthy rendition of the classic pub burger that comforts regulars at neighborhood joints across Wisconsin. For a touch of tangy flavor, I add some Rath Sauce — a divine, orange-ish mix of ranch, mayo, ketchup, and barbecue and adobo sauces.

I take my last burger bite as the UW men’s basketball team upsets Purdue on a projector screen in front of a packed Rath crowd. It tastes a lot like home.

A photo taken circa 1973, when the McDonald’s was five years old. Today, it’s a post office. Wisconsin Historical Society

For almost four decades, the corner of State and Lake was home to a beloved institution where UW students could get a quick bite. No, not the lunch counter at Rennebohm Drug Store, though that had its fans. Across the street and one door down, at 441 N. Lake, stood McDonald’s, offering those in need a quick infusion of all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, and sesame-seed buns.

This McDonald’s franchise appeared on the campus scene in 1968, the same year that the Big Mac was added to the menu at all of the chain’s restaurants. Ray Kroc himself — the man who turned, ahem, Scottish cuisine into an American phenomenon — made an appearance at the opening of the company’s 1,031st outlet. Between then and 2006, the spot served the campus community with uncounted tons of beef, one quarter pound at a time, as well as McMuffins, McNuggets, and the famed french fries that were invented by Edwin Traisman, onetime administrator of the UW Food Research Institute.

By the 21st century, the Lake Street McDonald’s was showing its age, and its owners felt it was too expensive to renovate. They sold the site to the U.S. Postal Service, which has operated a post office there ever since.

The departure provoked mixed emotions. Then-alder Austin King ’03 told the Badger Herald that he wouldn’t shed any tears over the loss of McDonald’s. But Charlie Burns ’09 responded that losing it was upsetting. “That McDonald’s used to be my pre-football game meeting place … to get breakfast,” he said. The McD’s on Regent Street was too far away.

The post office still stands at 441 N. Lake, but the area around it is in flux. The city closed the Lake Street Campus Garage in December 2023, aiming to turn the lot into apartments, parking, retail space, and a bus station. The nearest McFlurry is still a mile away — 21 minutes by foot or seven minutes to the drive-thru.

In 1899, this publication began life as the Wisconsin Alumni Magazine. In 1936, it rebranded as Wisconsin Alumnus. Single life was fun for a while, but we re-pluralized in 1988 and became Wisconsin Alumni. In 1990, we became On Wisconsin. UW Archives

In 1899, 125 years ago, the University of Wisconsin’s alumni association decided to offer something new and substantial in its effort to build support for the university: it began publication of a magazine. This periodical, in the words of editor Charles Allen 1899, PhD10-4, was intended “primarily for the alumni, [though] it will aim, I suppose, to interest those whose thoughts often turn to matters of higher education.”

This was the launch of the Wisconsin Alumni Magazine, which later became Wisconsin Alumnus, and later still, in 1990, On Wisconsin. We’re not the world’s first alumni magazine — that’s believed to be Greetings, first sent by Wayland Academy of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, in 1882. But we’ve certainly been around awhile.

In that first issue, Adams and his colleagues — who included future Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Frederick Jackson Turner 1884, MA1888 — spent 60 pages relating news of the students, faculty, and alumni. We do much the same today.

It can be disorienting to read the articles in that first issue, published an eighth of a millennium ago. Adams warned that there was frequent conflict between campus and the state government: “it often happens that a legislator comes to Madison with a vigorous determination to lessen the appropriations to the university.” Who can imagine such a thing, as we look back from this era of amity and common purpose?

But the aims that inspired Adams and his colleagues still drive us today. Like Adams, we on the On Wisconsin editorial team believe that, “in educational matters, at least, knowledge is the surest possible cure for skepticism and hostility.”

And so we continue to offer you a look at the ways that UW–Madison changes lives for people, and the ways that extraordinary people change the UW. Our name has changed a few times, but our purpose hasn’t.

Thanks for reading and for keeping us going all these years.

At the People’s Farm last October, students gathered potatoes that they then distributed for free on East Campus Mall. Bryce Richter

It sounds like a call to rebellion: The King has fallen! Power to the People!

But you can put away the red banner of socialism — it’s not a revolution but a rebranding. Since October 2023, the organization formerly known as the F. H. King Students for Sustainable Agriculture has been called the People’s Farm.

The student organization began in 1979, based at the Eagle Heights community garden in the northwest corner of campus. It initially took its name from Franklin Hiram King, a professor of agricultural physics at the UW from 1888 to 1902. King was something of a prophet of organic farming techniques, and he did groundbreaking — forgive the term — studies of soil physics and soil fertility. He’s also remembered as the father of the cylindrical silo, a staple of farm architecture across the Midwest.

In 2023, the student organization’s governing board voted unanimously to change its name — not as a knock on King but as a reflection of the group’s current goals.

“This name change is by no means an attempt at erasure of the contributions F. H. King made both to the field of agriculture and the UW,” says Connor Reilly x’25, farm director for the organization. “Rather, it is purely to make our name more inherently aligned with what we do. Everything the organization has done since 1979 has been for the people, not in the name of F. H. King.”

The King legacy will live on within the group, which, according to Reilly, will devote part of its website to telling King’s story and plans to add plaques or signs to highlight his many accomplishments.

Long live the people!