Badgers

Wisconsin's 1994 Rose Bowl win closed a wait that stretched back decades for a program more used to Big Ten disappointment than Pasadena sunshine, and the Badgers returned twice more, in 1999 and 2000, before adding a fourth trip in 2011. The two national championships sit further back, in 1912 and 1942, from a program that by then had already claimed conference titles in the 1890s. Fourteen Big Ten championships followed across more than a century, clustered oddly: a run through 1896, 1897, 1901 and 1906, then nothing for decades before 1952 and 1959, and a modern run of three straight from 2010 to 2012.

The name traces to lead miners of the 1820s who dug burrows into hillsides rather than build shelter for winter, and the university carried that nickname into its first football season in 1889, when Alvin Kletsch's team played Calumet Club. Bucky Badger has represented it since.

Every autumn the fight is for Paul Bunyan's Axe, contested against Minnesota, a rivalry that once turned on a slab of bacon before the axe took its place as the trophy.

Wisconsin has sent two players to the Heisman ceremony as winners, Alan Ameche in 1954 and Ron Dayne in 1999, and produced linemen who defined their positions elsewhere: Mike Webster anchored the Pittsburgh Steelers' offensive line for a generation, and Joe Thomas built a Hall of Fame career on durability alone. J.J. Watt came through the same program before turning into one of the NFL's most disruptive defenders. Running backs have kept arriving in waves since Dayne — Montee Ball, Melvin Gordon, Jonathan Taylor — each pushing the school's rushing numbers further.

Camp Randall Stadium now holds 76,057 for each home game.