Badgers Rout Michigan State 31-3 On Homecoming; Waukesha Fans Given Three Weeks To Enjoy It

WAUKESHA — Wisconsin's 31-3 homecoming win over Michigan State on Saturday was greeted with the kind of unqualified, uncomplicated joy that Waukesha-area Badger fans have not been permitted to feel since roughly the second week of September, and several of them used the word "suspicious" to describe how good it felt.

The win was the Badgers' third in a row to open October, and it was celebrated loudly at Donny's Rail Yard Tap on Barstow Street, where 58-year-old owner Donny Pelke said he sold through his entire stock of mini corn dogs by the start of the third quarter and had to send his nephew to the Piggly Wiggly on Sunset Drive for a second batch.

"We haven't run out of corn dogs since the Rose Bowl," Pelke said. "I don't like what that tells me about expectations, but I like what it tells me about the corn dogs."

A Schedule That Does Not Care How You Feel

The celebration was tempered almost immediately by the fact that the Badgers now face three consecutive ranked opponents before Halloween: at No. 21 UCLA on October 17, at home against No. 19 USC on October 24, and at No. 20 Iowa on October 31. Pelke has already printed the dates on a whiteboard behind the bar, under the heading "THE GAUNTLET," in red marker that he said he bought specifically because the black one "didn't feel urgent enough."

Regular Donny's patron Lorraine Guckenberg, 44, of the Town of Waukesha, said she has already requested the afternoon of October 31 off from her job at a dental office in downtown Waukesha, citing "a family matter" that is, in fact, Iowa's defensive line.

"My dentist thinks I have a sick aunt in Dubuque," Guckenberg said. "I do not have an aunt in Dubuque. I have never been to Dubuque."

"We're gonna need a bigger TV. I keep saying it to my wife like it's a joke, and then Tuesday I measured the wall again."

— Donny Pelke, owner, Donny's Rail Yard Tap

The Case For Enjoying The Win Anyway

Not everyone at the bar on Saturday was willing to let the schedule ruin the moment. Craig Odom, 36, who watched the game standing near the dartboards because the booths filled up by kickoff, said he had made peace with the coming gauntlet by simply refusing to think about it until Thursday.

"Thirty-one to three is thirty-one to three," Odom said. "I'm not going to let a schedule I can't control steal a Saturday I can control. I will, however, be extremely stressed out starting Thursday."

Waukesha West graduate and longtime Badgers season-ticket holder Teresa Fendrich, 51, said the homecoming win was the first game all season she watched without pacing, which she considers a personal milestone. She watched the second half seated. She described this as "a risk."

"I paced through the entire 2019 Rose Bowl," Fendrich said. "I paced through a Big Ten Championship I wasn't even emotionally invested in because a friend's team was playing. Sitting down for the fourth quarter of a 28-point game felt reckless, honestly, but I did it."

Bars Bracing For Three Straight Saturdays

Pelke said he has already adjusted his corn dog order for the next three weekends upward by roughly 40 percent and has asked his nephew to clear his schedule entirely for October 24, the USC game, which Pelke has decided without much evidence will be "the bad one."

He has also begun fielding requests for the back room, which seats 34 and has, since Saturday, been booked solid through Halloween by regulars who want a reserved spot for what Pelke's whiteboard now refers to in smaller letters underneath THE GAUNTLET as "the part where we find out who we are."

"I don't love that he wrote that on the wall," Guckenberg said. "But I also haven't asked him to take it down."

The Badgers host USC at Camp Randall Stadium on October 24, a game both Pelke and Guckenberg described, independently and without prompting, as the one they are least looking forward to watching and most looking forward to having watched.