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Fans at Wisconsin football games tend to create a pretty intimidating environment for opposing teams with the help of the fabled “Jump Around” tradition that’s been a staple at Camp Randall Stadium for more than 25 years. However, Dan Lanning dreamed up a pretty ingenious way to turn the tables before Oregon headed to Madison last week.
In 1992, House of Pain scored its only real hit with “Jump Around,” the absolute banger that still manages to get people to do exactly that when it gets played more than 30 years after it came out.
In 1998, Wisconsin Badgers tight end Ryan Sondrup was trying to dream up a way he might be able to contribute to his team’s cause while dealing with an injury that had sidelined him for the season.
He ended up putting together a playlist of songs he thought had the potential to inject some energy into Camp Randall Stadium—including “Jump Around,” which blasted through the speakers prior to the start of the fourth quarter.
The tune whipped the crowd into a frenzy as a Purdue team led by Drew Brees was marching toward the end zone, and that shift in energy is widely credited with stalling the drive while helping Wisconsin hold on for the 31-24 victory.
Ever since then, “Jump Around” has been a staple at Badgers games, and I can’t say I would blame visiting players for getting thrown off while watching tens of thousands of screaming fans leap in unison between the third and fourth quarter to the point where the stadium literally shakes.
It didn’t seem like the Oregon Ducks needed to be too worried about getting psyched out when you consider they were favored by close to two touchdowns when Wisconsin hosted them on Saturday, but head coach Dan Lanning wasn’t taking any chances based on the exercise in reverse psychology that was prominently featured in the most recent installment of the Ducks vs Them web series.
Lanning rolled into the team’s preparatory meeting on Monday with a speaker blaring “Jump Around” and informed them it was far from the last time they’d be hearing it over the course of the week.
The skipper told them his goal was to elicit a Pavlovian response when the song came on, saying, “Whenever we hear this, I want our tempo to change. I want the temperature of the room to change. When we hear it at practice, I want you to say to yourself, ‘S–t’s about to get serious.'”
That turned out to be a pretty good call, as the Ducks found themselves down 13-6 when the end of the third quarter rolled around.
Plenty of Oregon players joined the crowd when “Jump Around” came on, and while I don’t want to say it played a huge role in their comeback, it’s hard to ignore the fact they were able to score 10 unanswered points en route to walking away with the 16-13 victory to remain undefeated.