Operation Camp Randall: The highs and lows of procuring a student season ticket 

(Editor’s note: Sophia Ross is a sophomore at UW–Madison, and a Badger football fan.)

An alarm blares at a time way too early for a summer morning to start. There’s a mad scramble to unlock three phones and four computers left charging the night before. Text threads with friends are opened to keep each other in the loop.  

That’s right: It’s the Badger football student season ticket sale. 

University of Wisconsin–Madison students love our football, with its legacy of excellent play on the field and rollicking fun in the stands. New head coach Luke Fickell has only added to the excitement. Tailgates are attended, outfits are planned days in advance, and our 76,000-person stadium is guaranteed to be filled with students, family members, alumni, faculty, staff, and more — all ready to jump around at the end of the third quarter.  

But to truly experience a Wisconsin gameday, you need a ticket. And the fate of any student’s football viewing aspirations is determined by a random queue on a June morning.  

The football season ticket sale is both highly anticipated and dreaded. With more demand than availability, the ticket sale tends to sell out in approximately 30 minutes, sparking students to come up with rather creative solutions.  

The sales are June 12 for juniors and seniors, June 13 for freshmen and sophomores, and July 12 for graduate students, all at 7:30 a.m.

The sales queue opens 30 minutes before the 7:30 a.m. drop, but for students from the West Coast, it’s much earlier. 

“Being two hours behind Central Time may not seem like a big difference, but when it comes to the morning, it is,” said Jacqueline Renaud, an incoming junior from Southern California. “Instead of getting up at around 7 a.m. to get in line for tickets, I end up waking up at around 4:55 a.m. just to set up all my devices to be ready to join the queue.” 

Following the early morning wake-up, many students log into multiple devices and pull up the queue. Only a rookie would rely simply on one device to obtain a season pass. Experienced Badgers would borrow their brother’s computer, mom’s iPad, dad’s phone and any additional devices to improve their odds. 

“My main strategy was using the most devices, which, embarrassingly enough, included my internship-provided work computer,” said sophomore Emilie Lesinski. “Desperate times called for desperate measures.” 

As the minutes tick down, the nerves increase. A randomly generated queue means regardless of how many devices one might have pulled up, anyone could still miss the opportunity to purchase a pass. 

Many students have a contingency plan: sending their information to a friend or several, just in case. Group chats flowed with shared usernames and passwords. 

Students who didn’t get a season ticket still have other options. 

“Since I was not able to get tickets, I am planning on trying to buy tickets before each game,” said student Sophia Delgado said.  

And the excitement builds for the season. 

“Our team this year is supposed to be amazing as well, and I’m excited to see Coach Fickell in action,” Renaud said.