Madison’s semipro team revs up just before kickoff.
On Saturday, June 25, the Madison Mallards will be in Green Bay. But Warner Park won’t be silent. The Madison Mad Dawgs, the city’s 3-year-old semipro football team, will wrap up its home season with a 3 p.m. game against the Tri-County Bulldogs of Reedsburg. (Admission is $6 for adults and $3 for kids under 9.) With a 3-2 record in the nine-team Northern Lights Football League, the Mad Dawgs have three games remaining on their schedule, and there’s a good chance they’ll host a playoff game in late July.
“These guys don’t get paid, so the majority of them play for the passion of the game,” says Fred Jackson, Mad Dawgs owner and offensive coach. “For many, it’s a positive outlet.”
With about 60 players ranging in age from 18 to 53 — and experience levels spanning from “absolutely none” all the way up to having tried out for an NFL team — the Mad Dawgs are a motley bunch. Some are engineers, while others work at McDonald’s. A handful of players have police records, and more than a few might be roaming the streets were it not for the opportunity to play football.
Team-building experiences, opportunities to advance in the sport and participation in community events, such as the MDA Madison Muscle Team fundraiser at Keva Sports Center on July 28, help these men improve their lives, according to Jackson. “We work with players off the field, which keeps them tied to the program,” he says.
If the team’s name sounds familiar, that’s because the Madison Mad Dogs was an arena football team that played from 1998 to 2000 at what was then known as the Dane County Coliseum.
The Mad Dawgs (see what Jackson did there?) arrived in Madison in 2014, right around the time the Madison Mustangs of the semipro MidStates Football League galloped off to wherever financially defunct sports team go. They went undefeated last season and are the reigning NLFL champions. Not bad, considering that the Mad Dawgs didn’t even exist in 2013; back then, they were known as the Milton Mayhem and played in a league composed of eight-man football teams. Some of the same players remain.
Jackson doesn’t worry about his team folding, as the Mustangs did. Through sponsorships by such local businesses as Burrachos in Sun Prairie and First Choice Drywall in Waunakee — as well as his own out-of-pocket payments for referees and league fees for players who can’t afford them — he keeps the Mad Dawgs barking.
