A Wisconsin fan’s “Airing of Grievances” on Festivus

The tradition of Festivus begins with the Airing of Grievances.

I’ve got a lot of problems with you people! Now, you’re going to hear about it!

• You, Gritty, my son tells me you stink! You’ve been haunting our nightmares for the last several months. Do you know how much therapy you’ve ... I lost my train of thought. Gimme a second.
• Oh, Urban Meyer, are you seriously teaching a leadership & character class? What are you going to be, the counterexample? And you’ll probably talk about some garbage alluding to “Great Man Theory” ... you do realize that the “Great Man Theory” of leadership is largely ignored by the emerging academic work around leadership? You also don’t even know that retirement involves not working. Why do you still have a role in the athletic department? Are you planning on returning to the sideline in 2020? Why bother asking; of course you are.
• ::Jake informs me that he’s reportedly going to be an assistant Athletic Director:: WHAT IN THE NAME OF ART VANDELAY are you doing? I wouldn’t want you to be the assistant director of our community chess club! Get straight out of here.
• Hey, people who sit behind me at Camp Randall, just shut your traps for a few seconds. I don’t believe you for one half of a second that your complaints about and suggestions regarding the football team go straight to Barry Alvarez. Barry doesn’t give three Grittys what you think, but he’ll gladly take that million dollar check you claimed to have written. Your pontification about your “influence” deserves a spot at the top of r/thathappened and r/cringe. And another thing, your sexism makes me want to pit you against Badger alumnus Hilary Knight in the feats of strength. Saying women’s hockey isn’t really hockey? What absolute bloody garbage. I’d give Knight three seconds before you run away crying like ... well ... me after seeing Gritty.

• Now that we’re onto women’s hockey, why the heck, NCAA, are you putting the women’s frozen four on the east coast EACH of the next four years? If Wisconsin will end it’s national title drought in spring, it will be completely inaccessible for most fans. Yeah, there are a lot of women’s hockey teams on the east coast, but their attendance pales in comparison to Wisconsin, Minnesota (Twin Cities), and Duluth.
• And to you, LaBahn Arena, you’re great, but this is the airing of grievances. LaBahn unfortunately does not meet the specifications to eligible to host multi-team tournaments. What the heck, NCAA, why don’t you bend the rules a little bit. LaBahn is a great place to watch a hockey game. Why can’t Barry put in a bid for the Kohl center or even the Aliant Energy Center (formerly Dane County Colisseum) to host the WCHA tournament or Frozen Four? If you have, then I’m mad at the NCAA again for rejecting it.
• USA Hockey, I’ve had absolutely enough of you. You told Annie Pankowski of the Wisconsin women’s hockey team that she would make the Olympic hockey team this year. You announced it. And because of that, her family spent thousands on a trip to watch her win a gold medal in Korea. But then you cut her at the last minute without warning.
• Paul Chryst, you need to answer for your decision-making on fourth down. You punt at the absolute worst situations, but sometimes you took the risk of doing the best thing and going for it. And when you do, you call plays that appeared to make absolutely zero sense. (Let’s ignore that I’ve never played a down of tackle football in my life). Take a stats class, for Gritty’s sake!
• Don’t think I’ve forgotten about you, Big Ten football. You were awful in about every meaning of the word. You’re now the headline scandal conference of the NCAA, and you can’t even bother to put a team into the College Football Playoff.
• And Jim Harbaugh! You had one chance to redeem the conference and you blew it! Return that paper bag that you can’t coach yourself out of to the grocery store for a $0.10 credit to your next bill. You’re going to need it when the Michigan faithful turn on you.
• Green Bay Packers, consider this a warning if you don’t hire Harbaugh. I don’t want to see this guy coaching in the Big Ten ever again, and you’ll be on the list next year if you do something dumb like hiring a qualified candidate.
• Okay, I’m mad at everyone who lead me to believe that Wisconsin was going to be a playoff contender this year. Lee Corso, why did you get my hopes up for a national championship? (I’m going to just ignore that I shouldn’t have payed any attention to Corso). Injuries, you suck. Just when we think we have something nice, you take it away. The 2017-18 basketball season was ruined because of you, and you’ve reared your ugly head by playing a part in ruining one of the potentially best football seasons ever.
• I didn’t want to do this, but I feel the need to call out some of the Badger faithful here. Attendance for men’s hockey and football are down this year (I get it, the teams are struggling). Badgers twitter seems to have eroded a bit, too, with people continuing to tweet at decommits and transfers. Don’t forget the hot takes. Oh goodness, the takes. And don’t worry, if you’re reading this, I’m not talking about you.

This concludes my airing of grievances for the year. I pass it on to you to air your grievances as well.