more on madison not being the greatest college sports town in america

In response to my post about Madison being #1 college sports town in America, a reader from Madison who has lived here since 1994 reports that she has also never been asked "How ya think the Badgers will do this year?", despite the magazine author's suggestion that this question is ubiquitous around town.

Following up, I asked her "if someone did ask, would you automatically regard them as a friend?" which the magazine article's author claim. She replied:

by a strange coincidence, i can sort-of confidently answer 'no' to this. yesterday while coming back from the grocery store a senior-looking man rode by me on the sidewalk on a bike and when he got next to me, said (seemingly to himself) "badgers win?" so i yelled out, "i dunno..." as he rode away. 5 blocks later, he rode past me the other way and said, angrily (to himself again) "they won." apparently he had to double back to let me know the news. some may chalk that up to the "midwesterners are nice" adage, but if you ask me, the old man's tetched [that is, crazy], and his demeanor creeped me out.

The episode is made even more intriguing by the fact that the Badgers lost yesterday (to UNLV by the resounding and peculiar score of 23-5), meaning that the man was either lying or mistaken with his news update.

Incidentally: I had the chance to dramatically increase my net worth today, and blew it. When I woke up and realized that it was pouring rain, my first coherent thought was how I should log onto TradeSports and bet against the Badgers at the prevailing price, since they were dramatically overvalued given that their offense is precisely the kind that underperforms on a wet day. But I did not actually follow through with this, and so remain destitute, living out of my RV with only a box of Triscuits to my name.