Two seconds remained in the third quarter when Wisconsin safety Aaron Henry returned a Northwestern interception 50 yards for a touchdown to put the cap on the Badgers’ 2010 Big Ten co-championship and earn a spot in the Rose Bowl. As the fans inside Camp Randall Stadium roared with delight over yet another score, one student at the game, sore and exhausted, couldn’t help but sigh.
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“It’s the only time in my entire life that I’ve rooted against Wisconsin football,” Stacy Bruner said. “We’re up 40 points and then all of a sudden the other team throws a pick six and I’m pissed about it. It’s like, ‘Really? Was that really necessary?’”
Bruner had the honor (and burden) that day of dressing as the Bucky Badger mascot, which is tasked with performing pushups in front of the crowd for each point the team scores, each time it scores. He initially thought it might be a light afternoon, given that he was actually the secondary Bucky for the game, assisting the primary Bucky during a stretch in the second and third quarters.
Then the touchdowns piled up. Wisconsin had 49 points by halftime. The third quarter brought three more touchdowns, the last of which was Henry’s touchdown to account for the final tally in a 70-23 victory. When all was said and done, Bruner had performed 315 pushups during his stint while wearing the 35-pound Bucky head. Instead of celebrating the win that night with fellow students, he visited a team trainer and then winced in pain as he went home to ice his shoulders.
Bruner laughs now about the game and can appreciate a silver lining: It could have been worse. Two weeks earlier, Wisconsin set the modern school record by scoring 83 points during an 83-20 victory against Indiana. Two of the other Buckys were in costume that day. As it turned out, the program’s three highest-scoring games to that point since World War I all took place that season.
“That was a rough year for Bucky doing pushups,” Bruner said.
When Wisconsin takes the field Saturday for its season opener against Illinois State, Bucky Badger will be front and center again, running the flag out of the tunnel before kickoff and entertaining the masses with dances, props, skits and, yes, pushups. But there is so much more to what goes into the finished product and the stories behind the scenes: the camaraderie, the time commitment, the hard work, the hilarity.
There are typically at least seven Bucky Badger mascots each year. (Jeff Hanisch / USA Today)It all begins with a three-day tryout each spring that features anywhere from 10 to 30 students for just a handful of spots, according to Josette Jaucian, who has been Wisconsin’s spirit squad director for the past 22 years. Day 1 is the most intensive. Students are put through four stations, beginning with a role-playing session in which participants must act out a scenario being read to them while wearing the Bucky head and gloves for the first and only time to show how they handle the suit.
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The other stations involve quick thinking using props not for their intended purpose — strumming a broom as a guitar or riding it as a horse, for example — a rhythm station that requires dancing to six songs over the course of 90 seconds and a station that has students max out on pushups and perform an “elevator” stunt with some of the cheerleaders in which they climb to the top of a pyramid.
Day 2 is an optional ice-skating tryout (Buckys who are more adept at skating wear the suit during Badgers hockey games). On Day 3, participants create their own skit to act out and then interview with a panel of athletic department administrators. Devin Deegan, a Bucky Badger from 2016-19, sealed the deal with a skit in which he overcame several blunders to find love with a beautiful maiden that took the form of a mop.
“I had nothing to lose and almost everything to gain in that moment,” Deegan said. “It was very silly. I’ve never done anything like that before.”
Working around hockey again was fun, and a #Badgers win made it even sweeter! @UWBuckyBadger was a whole mood tonight too. 🤣🐾👐 #OnWisconsin pic.twitter.com/HTR4lzLTuI
— Tessa Ruid (@TessaRuid) December 30, 2021
There are typically seven students who dress as Bucky Badger during the school year, although there have been eight in some years. Buckys must try out again following their first year on the team. Jaucian said the last woman to be a member of the Bucky Badger team was in 1997, primarily because one of the requirements for wearing the suit is that students must be between 5 feet 10 and 6 feet 2 so people won’t notice a difference when multiple people wear the mascot.
Being on the team is serious business. Students participate in 5:30 a.m. lifts twice a week at the workout facility in the Kohl Center along with the cheerleaders and the dancers. They also meet twice a week to discuss different skits and create props. Jaucian said that, before the pandemic, Bucky Badger participated in 700-750 events per year, including Badgers sporting events, weddings, corporate gatherings, parades and birthday parties. That means, even on a rotation, students perform roughly 100 events in a given year — or about one every three days, on average.
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She said those events bring in upwards of $100,000 a year for the university, though none for the actual costume wearers. A typical appearance fee is $300 for the first hour and $150 for each subsequent hour. Organizers must pay for travel and changing time — 15 minutes to get in the suit and 15 minutes to get out. Jaucian said the students gain important real-world experience from the events.
“We have to trust when they’re going out there that they’re being good ambassadors to the university and making smart decisions,” Jaucian said. “Bucky isn’t invincible and he can’t just do anything he wants. There are definitely times where people are annoyed with Bucky’s antics and we’ll hear about it. So they kind of have to know how to read the room, how to read the group and interact appropriately.”
The question you might be asking at this point is: Why do this? Why spend all those hours volunteering for something that requires so much work and comes with so little public reward? The reasons, according to former Bucky Badgers, are plentiful. They’re bringing joy to so many other people while finding a purpose on campus for themselves. Sam Reding, a Bucky Badger from 2015-19, considered transferring to play lacrosse at Division III Denison College in Ohio but found a home with his fellow Bucky mascots. The idea of being anonymous actually was one of the great appeals.
“It’s like having that taste of fame without anyone knowing you’re famous,” Reding said. “So it’s a really cool feeling to be in suit because no one knows it’s you and you can just truly be Bucky how you want to be Bucky. As soon as you get in suit, it’s like a flip is being switched. You have that swagger. You have that confidence that walking around you don’t normally have.”
Bucky Badger often appears at more than 700 events in a year. (David Banks / USA Today)Others cite the ridiculous stories that never would have happened during the course of their “normal” student life.
Bruner once was involved in an on-field scuffle during the 2011 season when Ohio State came back to defeat Wisconsin 33-29 on a last-minute pass from quarterback Braxton Miller at the Horseshoe in Columbus. Buckeyes fans rushed the field in celebration before Bucky could leave. One overzealous fan pursued Bucky, hit him in the back of the head, yelled an expletive at him and flipped him the double bird.
“And I headbutted him as hard as I possibly could,” Bruner said. “My head that year was almost 40 pounds. And I got just some whip on this and it hit the kid right in the head and he just crumbled to the ground. It was really bad. If this was in the era where everybody had camera phones going all the time, I might’ve gotten arrested for assault.”
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Gene Chyou was involved in perhaps one of the most infamous and absurd moments while wearing the Bucky Badger suit during Wisconsin’s 2004 victory against Penn State. He was climbing through the student section when he spotted some people he knew and went to take pictures with them.
“I swear it was not more than 30 seconds later that somebody, a girl behind me, yelled, ‘Let’s pick him up!’” Chyou said. “And instantly there were 12 hands on me and I was being lifted into the air.”
Chyou continued to pass through the stands until a police officer yanked him out of the air and escorted him to the unofficial police station located underneath the football stadium. School officials had long since outlawed body passing in the interest of safety. Chyou attempted to plead his case to no avail. He was processed (after debating whether to sign his real name or simply write “Bucky”) and fined $181.
“Partway through the third quarter was one of my saddest moments because I got kicked out of the game,” Chyou said. “I got a ticket, I got kicked out, I put Bucky in the backpack and I walked home with the sounds of the stadium in the background behind me.”
Chyou later received a call from a retired land developer in town and avid Badgers supporter who offered to and ultimately paid his fine. Bucky Badger is no longer allowed to go into the crowd during football games because of the incident.
Buckys also earn memorable travel opportunities. Deegan went to the 2018 Pinstripe Bowl in New York and the Big Ten basketball tournament and attended a donor event at a winery in the Napa Valley area of California. Reding went to the 2017 Orange Bowl in Miami and the 2019 Senior Bowl in Mobile, Ala., and he skated on the ice at Madison Square Garden while attending games with the Badgers hockey team. He dressed as Bucky at the Spooner Rodeo in Spooner, Wis., at the Minnesota State Fair and while filming a commercial for ESPN at “The Bachelorette” mansion in California.
Did you see @UWBuckyBadger throw out the first pitch for the @Brewers on Saturday? Thanks to @Bernie_Brewer for helping Bucky celebrate #DayoftheBadger!
Only FIVE hours left! https://t.co/2AtEToet3r pic.twitter.com/5mq9ou6NSO
— Wisconsin Badgers (@UWBadgers) April 9, 2019
But what stands out most to former Buckys is the brotherhood that lasts well beyond the final time they wear the suit. Derek Hildebrandt wore the Bucky costume from 1991-93. In 1997, he created a golf outing called the Greater Bucky Open to honor the students who dress as Bucky. The first outing featured 12 golfers. Now, every outing has 144 golfers. There is an appreciation event on Wednesday, a charitable session Thursday to pass out toys at the children’s hospital and golf on Friday, all built around a Saturday home football game.
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The event provides plaques to the graduating seniors and recognizes all the current Buckys. Hildebrandt also helped to create a scholarship that pools money and is split among the current Buckys who have been on the team for at least a year (Jaucian estimated the total to be about $1,000 per Bucky). The annual outing has allowed Hildebrandt to meet every Bucky Badger for the past 25 years.
“They’re a wacky bunch of guys, but they are so awesome and fun, funny, interesting and diverse,” Hildebrandt said.
Bruner said he became long-distance friends with other mascots all over the country. During their time as student mascots, they shot commercials together, went to bowl games and tournaments and attended mascot camps and the mascot national championships. Bruner got married in 2018 and said 25 former mascots attended his wedding. Three of his groomsmen were former Buckys and the fourth was a former Sparty mascot at Michigan State. Other former mascots who attended once represented Goldy Gopher at Minnesota, Chip the Buffalo at Colorado and Mike the Tiger at LSU.
“The joke is that it’s a fur-ternity,” Bruner said. “Very cheesy. But it’s cool to just sit back and look at these people that I’ve become friends with and just the ridiculousness that brought us together as mascots.”
A day dedicated to ME…and all my friends!! #nationalmascotday pic.twitter.com/4mqdq0WLzN
— Bucky Badger (@UWBuckyBadger) June 17, 2022
There is no hard-and-fast rule against people knowing that a student is Bucky Badger. Often, students make their family and close friends aware of it. But they also try to limit just how many people know, though it can be difficult to keep the constant queries at bay.
“I was at my roommates’ place before a hockey game and I was just getting ready to go to the hockey game,” Reding said. “He had his parents there. I slink out of there with my backpack on. They go, ‘What do you have in that backpack?’ I just turn around and I go, ‘A dead body.’ And then I left. This was like the first time I met all of them, so they were a little uncertain about me after that.”
Of course, the fewer people that know, the better. Jaucian said the costumes cost about $5,000 to replace and there have been occasions in which they’ve been stolen. She recalled one person stealing a Bucky out of the back of a car. It was found by a dumpster at an apartment complex. In 2010, one Bucky Badger had his head stolen from his campus area apartment during a party. The mascot head was returned the next morning.
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Even if you don’t know who’s in the suit on game day, know that the experience is as enduring for Bucky Badger as it is for fans. Former Buckys agree there is nothing quite like the adrenaline of running the flag into a stadium full of 80,000 cheering fans. They’re part of memories and stories that will last a lifetime.
“I can still relive those moments in my brain,” Chyou said. “I would never have traded it for anything else. I put that line, former mascot, UW Madison, Bucky Badger, at the bottom line of my resume and it never fails. It always breaks the ice when I’m looking for a job and a conversation.”
(Top photo: Lawrence Iles / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
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