Is leaving Camp Randall at halftime okay?

A blood drive, a carbonated water that doesn't suck, and Wisconsin Football student tickets, all in a first attempt at a Madison round up.

I have a lot of thoughts and not all of them fit into the scope of Madison city planning/local politics. These thoughts aren’t necessarily worthy of a full post, but I still feel like they should enter the ether of Madison's cultural discussion. This is my first attempt at a round up for random Madison takes and I hope you enjoy.

Go Donate Blood

First, as someone who lists being a blood donor on my LinkedIn page, I need to highlight the "We Give Blood" blood drive. This is the second annual competition featuring Big 10¹ schools where donating blood can save lives and win your school research dollars. Abbot is the main sponsor for this event and the winner-take-all research prize is $1,000,000. Considering the cuts in funding for science across the board, if you can do something this impactful as an individual and also contribute towards winning this grant, I view it as your duty as a Madisonian to participate or spread the word. Not everyone can donate, but everyone can talk about the competition.

Blood Drive leaderboard as of September 22nd. The competition lasts until December 5th

UW-Madison currently holds an 1,000 donor lead over Nebraska. We came in second last year to the Cornhuskers and I would like beat them this time. What’s incredible is that in less than a month we’ve already eclipsed Nebraska’s winning donor total of 4,000 in 2024. Go Badgers!

Shout out to the UW-Madison lead ambassador who showed up to the Epic Systems monthly blood drive to sign up donors; there are a lot of "do gooders” on campus and it was an easy way to rack up points for the leaderboard².

If you haven't donated before or it's been a while, consider making this a routine. It's beneficial for society and needed. I've been a (mostly) consistent, every two months donor³ and I'm approaching the 3 gallon mark⁴. What started as a journey to determine what my blood type was morphed into a sense of civic duty. Each donation can affect three lives. Different components are used in different ways, but you are helping trauma victims, cancer patients, and surgery patients. Beyond the carrot of doing good and saving lives, if we get into a blood shortage, your relative or friend may have to delay their elective surgery. That isn't fun.

Many of us do not donate blood. The Red Cross estimates 3% of the population donates for an annual count of 13,000,000 units. Blood donation rates are decreasing. If you are looking around and thinking everything sucks and there's nothing you can do, you can always do something good and donate blood.

I wish we got a Bucky like Oregon got with their duck, but a shirt’s a shirt

And you can now get a T-shirt for your favorite Big 10 school! Donate now so you can donate in November before the challenge ends on December 6th.

Bubbl’r - drink of the gods?

The best flavor - Watermelon Lime Smash’r

I didn't drink caffeine growing up; my parents limited soda intake and Coke/Pepsi were not allowed. I didn't drink coffee in college (sleep is my caffeine), and only now have I started to get the craving for a jump start in the afternoon.

Enter Bubbl'r, the Wisconsin based "antioxidant sparkling water" with natural caffeine. I typically hate sparkling water (it's too carbonated, to the point that I "chew" the bubbles in a LaCroix or intentionally swirl a Klarbrunn to make it still), but this drink hits the sweet spot. It's not ridiculously carbonated, it's got erythritol⁵ so I'm not drinking 30 grams of sugar and yet it satiates my sweet tooth, and the flavors are so interesting.

I first came across these in college in Liz Waters dorm. They were less than $1 with my residence discount and there were student ambassadors giving them out for free pretty consistently on campus. However, I was bullied into not liking them because the "diet soda of choice" was Pepsi.

Flash forward 6 years and they are being handed out at a work conference. I try it and it's perfect. Then I start to see them in stores! 6 for $6, why not try it? And what started with a single case has morphed into at least a dozen.

And guess what? There's a bakers dozen of flav’rs to choose from. Here are my top five:

1. Watermelon Lime Smash'r

2. Twisted Elix'r (Raspberry, Lime, Citrus)

3. Cranberry Grapefruit Sparkl’r

4. Triple Berry Breez’r

5. Orange Dream Freez’r

Am I trying to pull a Kwik Trip Coffee guy? Maybe.

Will I purchase these for more than $1 per can? Probably not. But if they maintain the below $6 per case price I see every month at different stores, I'm going to continue to stock up. I'm curious to see if these break containment and start to appear in other markets outside of Wisconsin⁶. I can find them in neighboring states and most people who haven't heard of them do enjoy them when the try them. But the beverage market is extremely competitive and is highly shaped by trends. I hope Bubbl'r becomes a mainstay.

Justifying Camp Randall Walkouts aka student tickets suck

Last weekend was a rough time for Badgers football fans. "Fire Fickell" chants broke out and a plethora of fans left at halftime⁷. Crowd sizes have always been contentious, and in particular this year the discourse has featured ticket price contention. When the athletic department postures that this team/entertainment product are worth $245 for student season tickets, another annual increase and 3rd in the B1G behind Ohio St. and Penn St., what quality can fans demand before leaving at halftime is warranted?

I can't answer that question (it's an individual's choice), and UW Athletics will receive no love from me as a former student if they complain. I know NIL and the transfer portal have massively altered the game, but if they really wanted to, they could sell out Camp Randall every time. Just sell more tickets to students. The problem is it would bring in more fans who aren't necessarily spending dollars at the stadium. UW Athletics wants to sell an experience at a premium without having a premium product and it's causing the whole experience to deteriorate. And the student tickets suck in particular.

If you aren't familiar with the convoluted student ticket program at UW-Madison, every July at 7am students can enter a lottery system to gain the ability to buy tickets. As a freshman from California, I didn't "know the game" in which you get every single electronic device in your household and enter at the same time. This gives you more chances at getting in the queue that can eventually buy tickets.

Season tickets can be had for $245, which is about $35 per game. This is a decent deal for competitive football where you stand on bleachers packed in like sardines in the sun or frigid cold. There are seven sections for students for a total of 14,000 tickets.

If you aren't one of the lucky 14,000, you're options are to 1) buy individual student tickets or 2) buy normal tickets. Normal tickets aren't fun as a student. You don't get any of the traditions because Wisconsin fans like to sit and clap instead of stand and cheer. At times it feels like you are watching golf⁸.

How do you buy a student ticket? Well, you need a student who has decided they aren't attending the game. This could be someone who went home for the weekend and has a valid reason to not go, or it could be a speculator who "scammed" students into $2,000 prices for the Alabama/Oregon package last year or actually scams students on the Facebook marketplace by selling multiples of the same tickets to different students.

Facebook Marketplace works like this: sellers put a post stating "Wisconsin - Michigan, $1. DM me". Every buyer is expected to then DM multiple sellers to work out a price. Because the price of tickets is unknown except by individual sellers, the asymmetrical information contributes to bad faith sales and poor etiquette. Sellers can fake demand ("someone's offering me $150, can you give me $160" even if that offer doesn't exist) or revoke deals (you agreed to a price and went to meet them at Union South, 30 minutes later, they are late, you text them and they respond "hey someone offered $20 more, sorry the ticket isn't available"), or the serious fraud case where you "sell" a ticket, get the student to Venmo cash, and then just never exchange it. It's an awful system. There looks to be a third party trying to support validating ownership, but that’s going to further increase the price.

Could the Athletic Department fix this? Yes. Almost immediately. This demand requires more supply and I think the inflated prices correlate directly with how willing people are to leave a poor game. If the ticket costs $150, people are frustrated and mad when the team plays poorly. They want an entertaining game. They walk out in a sign of protest. If the ticket costs $30, eh, it's a social experience that's worth the price. Stick around for Jump Around and maybe the 5th Quarter.

If the Athletic Department can't sell enough normal tickets, they should be selling more student tickets and lowering the price.

Additionally, they could change their lottery system. They could be more like basketball, where there's a reward system for attending games (helping reduce speculators that sell whole season packages immediately after buying them). But I'll take it a step further. Link the student tickets to a WisCard transaction. Make the game about showing up (on time) and leaving it at a fair price for everyone. This could help with alcohol incidents (where underage students wait as long as they can before going into the game so they are tipsy at Jump Around) and also our reputation as not filling the stadium until the end of the first quarter. If the source of demand is "how long do you want to wait in line" rather than "did you get randomly selected or want to pay extremely inflated prices", you'd have a happier student fan base.

Will this happen? Probably not. I emailed the Athletic Department several years ago and got stonewalled. But it’s worth bringing up again if we are considering revamping the team.

1. B1G

2. Epic is the 63rd largest blood donor organization when I look at the Red Cross Blood Donor App “Impact” section. 29,000 lives impacted and 479 contributing members, I’m grateful for how easy the company makes it to donate on a schedule

3. Whole blood donations require a 56 day wait in between donations

4. Now I’m trying to catch my grandma who’s donated 9 documented gallons but is probably closer to two dozen based on transcription errors from paper

5. No comment if this is good for you, I just know it’s not normal sugar

6. I didn’t realize that Wisconsin’s large presence in sparking water. LaCroix and Klarbrunn were both founded here

7. Even Jump Around couldn't save this game

8. Don't even get me started on the Kohl Center, where fandom goes to die