Badgers' Offensive Collapse Fills Waukesha Bars; 'Abu Sama Is A Household Name,' Says Manager

WAUKESHA — Wisconsin's 31-24 loss to UCLA ended Saturday afternoon, but at The End Zone Tap on Broadway, the game was still being played Tuesday night, one frustrated gesture at a time.

Manager Lou Pasternak said he's used to seeing a dip in foot traffic the Tuesday after a tough loss. This week was different. He counted 62 people in the bar by 8:30 p.m., four days after the final whistle, most of them clustered around the center bigscreen watching the same nine seconds of replay over and over.

"We had 62 people here Tuesday night just dissecting the offensive scheme," Pasternak said. "One guy brought a notebook and was literally charting runs." Pasternak said most of the debate centered on whether the offensive line could give Wisconsin's starting running back enough room to work.

The notebook guy

The notebook belonged to Gerald Sikorski, 48, a drywall contractor from Hillcrest who said he'd charted all 24 Wisconsin rushing attempts from Saturday's game by hand, assigning each one a letter grade and a one-word note in the margin. Eleven of the 24 plays were marked simply collapsed.

Most of those plays, Sikorski noted, were handoffs to running back Abu Sama, who has become a name regulars at the bar now recognize on sight.

"I'm not a film guy," Sikorski said, flipping to a page where he'd circled a particular third-and-two in red pen three separate times. "But when you watch it slowed down on your phone in a bar for forty minutes, you start to see patterns. The left guard is getting walked back about a yard and a half before the handoff even happens. That's not nothing."

Sikorski said he planned to bring the notebook back Thursday, and possibly again before Saturday's game, "if the sample size demands it."

Two other bars, same argument

Grainger's, a bar on Grand Avenue, reported a similar Tuesday surge. Co-owner Patty Fennimore said she pulled up Wisconsin's offensive line splits on a bar tablet after four separate groups asked to see them.

"I've worked here six years. I've never had anybody ask me for pass-block win-rate numbers before last week," Fennimore said. "Now I've got a laminated card behind the register in case it comes up again."

At the third bar, a Sunset Drive tap room that asked to be identified only as "the one by the car wash," bartender Craig Dumke said the Wednesday crowd skewed older than usual, mostly men in their 50s who normally came in for Packers games and left by the second quarter.

"These guys stayed for three hours talking about a running back's vision and footwork like it was a city council meeting," Dumke said. "One of them asked me to rewind a replay. I don't even know how to rewind live TV. I called the cable company."

A debate with no clear winner

By Tuesday's end, Pasternak said the bar had settled into two camps: those who believed the offensive line was the root problem, and those who believed the issue was play-calling that didn't account for the line's limitations. Neither side appeared close to conceding, and Pasternak said he had fielded at least one request to open an hour early Saturday "in case things need to be discussed before kickoff."

He said he was considering it, provided someone else bought the first round of coffee.

Sikorski, for his part, said he was already planning next week's notebook page, with a new column for yards after first contact. "I don't know where this ends," he said. "But somebody's got to keep track."