The Badger football team crushed the Minnesota Gophers at Camp Randall on Saturday, winning by a score of 48 to 12 in their successful defense of Paul Bunyan's Axe at the 2006 UW Homecoming game. This blow-out made things quite busy for Bucky Badger, given one of the more enduring traditions at UW football games. Every time the Badgers score, the mascot is lifted atop a tumbling mat by UW cheerleaders, and proceeds to do one push-up for every point that the team has scored. Conducted in front of the student section at the north end of the stadium, fans chant along with the workout.
A video clip of Bucky completing 41 push-ups along with two other videos from this year's homecoming follow below.
The Badger Barge-Building Competition was one of the kickoff events of 2006 Homecoming at UW, which was titled Bucky Goes to Camp... Randall. Held on the afternoon of Friday, Oct. 6, the contest featured races between boats constructed solely of cardboard and duct tape. The barges were launched into Lake Mendota from the Alumni Pier at the Memorial Union Terrace, and from there were to race west as far as possible before getting waterlogged. This short video captures the race as seen from the shores of the Terrace.
Then there's the beer -- and the beer bongs -- that takes a central place at many a student party both before and after the football games. One brief clip shot by Jackson Krupp introduces the "Octabong," which is exactly what it sounds like. Reaching from the top of a chimney down to its eight-nozzled terminus, crowds of Badgers and Gophers fans imbibe to the tune of Michael Jackson's "Beat It," an excessive but altogether unsurprising scene at a UW homecoming.
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