Going Out With A Bang

Some folks have a way of making a dramatic entrance; others have mastered the art of making a dramatic exit. A former UW Badger athlete has apparently made one of the most notable exits in the storied history of exits from the UW. She holds the #1 spot currently in my "hall of fame" of notable exits.

The UW campus is situated right in the heart of Madison, and like many other Big Ten campuses there's a lively street with a strip of bars catering to the college crowd. Of course, in Madison, at the biggest party school in the nation, we have TWO streets crowded with establishments catering to the UW crowd...State Street, which links the state capitol with the campus, and University Ave, a multi-lane thoroughfare which runs right through the heart of campus. Along University Ave there are many watering holes which attract the college kids and the "townies". Wando's has the famous "fishbowl", a drink made in a goldfish bowl with about a dozen different kinds of liquor. One of them will do you in, if you're not an experienced drinker. Around the corner on Lake Street is the KK...the Kampus Klub....which is jock central. On any given night you'll find it packed with current UW athletes, former UW athletes, and scores of attractive young women collectively known as "the jersey chasers". And there are many other bars which attract a mix of the college crowd and those of us who are "a bit older".

There are many great stories about how UW athletes, present and former, have entertained the masses with their drunken antics at "bar time". There was a great joint just off State Street that hockey players frequented. It's not there any more; it was bulldozed to make way for the Overture Center. One summer night a decade or more ago, a couple of NHL players (of the myriad who forechecked their way to fame at the UW) got into a literal pissing contest outside the front door of the pub. All the male patrons joined in. The city cops wisely told them to knock it off, rather than creating a big to-do about it. I have a pal who brags about the night he got into a real pissing contest with players from the Chicago Blackhawks. Nowadays, there's a city ordinance against "depositing human waste" in public. True.

Heisman Trophy winner Ron Dayne kept a pretty low profile at the bars, but ended a teammate's football career by giving him a powerful right cross to the face after some locker room horseplay got out of control. Broke the other guy's eye socket and about a dozen other bones in his face. They don't talk much about that over on Monroe Street, at the UW jock HQ.

Now, there's the story of the young lady who made her exit from a UW sports team this week. I won't use her name or mention which team, but you can find out pretty easily. Every time an athlete is suspended or kicked off the team, the jocks go into full-protect mode. Nobody talks. It's been in the paper, but all the coach will say is the young lady was removed from the team for a non-team-related incident. Of course, any reporter with a modicum of moxie can find out what happened. With all the blogs and MySpace and Facebook posts out there, nothing's a secret. The story most often repeated in the blogs is that this young lady has been known to have a few too many at the bars from time to time, and has been given advice about her behavior. Advice, which as we know, most young people ignore. Apparently she got into a contest involving the consumption of 40-ounce bottles of Old English beer - known to the young folks as "OE40's". After downing her third, the predominant stories go, she stripped down to her skivvies and sports bra, inserted two roman candles on the saddlebags of her motor scooter, lit them, and took off down University Ave. (As veteran 'sconnies know, ya gotta put in a lot of "anti-freeze" so you don't feel the effects of the cold when you leave the bar.) The predominance of posts indicate that when she was pulled over on the scooter by city cops, she claimed she didn't speak English.

If the story is true....best exit ever!