Ted and I both attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison (lucky for us, because that’s where we met), and for an unknown and mysterious reason, I was recently thinking about our college school songs. During half-time at every football game, the UW band and cheerleaders led the sell-out crowd (±23,000 more seats than the GB Packers’ Lambeau Field at that time*) to sing “On Wisconsin,” the fight song (also the state song); “If You Want to Be a Badger,” an up-beat song; and “Varsity,” a hymn-like song of praise to UW. The internet knows everything, so I looked up the songs to find the lyrics and put my curious mind at ease.

Of course, “On, Wisconsin” is kind of obligatory–after all, it’s the University of Wisconsin in Wisconsin–but it has a good march tempo for a school song.

“If You Want to Be a Badger” is a peppy song and fun to sing. It revs up the crowd. There are four or five verses, which we usually didn’t sing at the games. Only the line–“If you want to be a Badger, just…da da da da da” changes with each verse.

The history of “Varsity” surprised me. I never heard or thought about it while I was in college, but it’s something to be appreciated.

It was a sight to behold 76,000 fans singing with the arm movements, and I do fondly remember these lyrics. The “famous arm swinging” refers to everyone raising their right arm to the left at the start of each line, then slowly moving it to the right for the last half of the first line, then slowly back to the left to begin the next line, and so on, keeping it in constant motion. The tempo is slow, and it’s actually a kind of moving thing to be there and to participate.** After that, however, it’s on with the game.

Ah, those were good days!

*Since our college days, both stadiums have been renovated to include more seating and both are still sell-outs for every football game. Lambeau Field now seats 80,978 fans, and Camp Randall now has seating for 80,321 fans.

**You can find videos of fans singing “Varsity” on YouTube, but you won’t get the in-person emotional experience of actually participating.