Many years ago, when my friend Glen Gardner and I were doing
a morning show on a local radio station, we would occasionally do a segment
called “Statue-Worthy”, in which we’d suggest names and let the listeners vote
on whether or not the person we “nominated” was worthy of having a statue
erected.
The genesis of this segment was the statuary in the photo
above: Pat Richter and Barry Alvarez, guarding the entrance to Gate 1 at Camp
Randall Stadium. The statues were put up
in 2006.
While we are both avid supporters of collegiate football,
Glen and I both believed that far too much emphasis was placed on it by
academic institutions, that the money involved in big-time Division One
football is obscene, and that the level of hero-worship that exists in the
jockocracy is silly.
Dona Shalala is as much responsible for the success of the UW football program as Alvarez and Richter, and you won’t find a statue of her
anywhere – not even in Bascom Hall.
Shalala was smart enough to know that guys like Don Morton and
Ade Sponberg were not going to get the UW football program back on track. She knew the people of Wisconsin would
respond to a local hero like Pat Richter taking the reins once held by the
legendary Elroy Hirsch, and she relentlessly hounded Richter to take the job,
even insisting that they make the announcement late in the day on December 31st, so
that the Rose Bowl telecast buzz would be about Pat Richter taking the Athletic
Director job at Wisconsin.
Our listeners agreed that if Richter (who did, indeed,
rescue the UW Athletic Department from the sea of red ink it was drowning in)
and Alvarez (the winningest football coach in Wisconsin history, the only one
ever to win back-to-back Rose Bowls) were statue-worthy, then certainly a
statue to Shalala should be erected.
Many of the callers made light-hearted jabs about how they’d have to
hire a good statue-maker, who could make the tiny Shalala appear as prominently
as Richter and Alvarez.
Given the good response to the first “statue-worthy” segment
we did regarding former Chancellor Shalala, on a later broadcast we put Jeff
Sauer’s name up for nomination, and the listeners resoundingly responded with a
loud “YES!!!” and most insisted that if we were going to erect a statue for
Sauer, we’d be remiss if we didn’t also erect a statue to Badger Bob
Johnson. Between Coach Sauer and Badger
Bob’s contributions of players to the NHL, you could put together a team that
would stand the challenge of any Hockey All-Star squad you care to assemble.
Through the course of these little show segments between
2006 and 2008, Glen and I came up with a list of other people who were
statue-worthy and passed muster with the audience.
And, of course, with any discussion of statuary around Camp
Randall came the universal complaints about the “Nail’s Tales” statue which
went up in 2005. It’s perhaps best
described as a maggot-infested corn cob, and a friend of mine (TV writer and
producer John Roach, who knows a thing or two about sports) suggested Sunday
that now that there’s an empty spot where Joe Paterno’s statue was, the good
folks of the Badger state should ship Nail’s Tales over to Pennsylvania to fill
the void left by the removal of the Paterno statue.
In his daily column/blog on the Isthmus Daily Page today, reacting
to the news about Penn State, former Madison Mayor (and UW grad) Dave
Cieslewicz suggests that the statues of Richter and Alvarez also be taken down. He makes the same points Glen and I did years
ago, but far more eloquently, with his rapier-like Polish wit.
The question “who’s statue-worthy” will always be one with
many answers, but maybe it’s time to think a little harder about the kind of
idol-worship we engage in.
