It’s been 75 years since Bill Sagal became the first person to wear a Bucky Badger costume.
The official mascot of the University of Wisconsin-Madison will also celebrate its 85th birthday Oct. 2, and to mark that milestone, former UW students that served as a Bucky Badger mascot over the years are spreading the word about an endowment fund that will help set the mascot program up for the future.
One of those students is Alex Nelson, a 2017 graduate of Wittenberg-Birnamwood High School who spent three years as a mascot.
“It’s a pretty big time commitment,” said Nelson, now an aerospace engineer in Boulder, Colorado. “You have to build skits and props for football, and it’s the same for basketball. It’s a large time commitment outside of the events. I had to work a job through all of that to help pay for college. It does put a little bit of extra stress on the guys on the team.”
Nelson is a member of the Bucky Badger Mascot Alumni Association, which is currently raising $2 million for a scholarship endowment fund to support future members of the mascot team.
The focus of the effort is the Adopt-A-Bucky campaign, in which supporters can donate to the fund.
“The goal is to raise $2 million so we have an ongoing endowment fund for everybody,” Nelson said. “We could give every member of the team a full-ride scholarship with that.”
There is a website, www.supportbucky.org, that offers ways to donate and a variety of support packages. One allows donors to “adopt a Bucky,” according to Nelson, which includes meeting one of the students at a dinner and have a one-on-one conversation. Other packages include signed apparel and tickets for sporting events.
All scholarships for the Bucky Badger student mascot program come from philanthropic support. Most student mascots do not have time for a part-time job and are also not able to receive revenue from Name, Image and Likeness ventures, because Bucky Badger is a licensed entity at UW-Madison.
“They get some assistance from the Athletic Department, but it’s not quite as much as you’re hoping for,” Nelson said. “The alumni have this vision of full-ride scholarships. Some schools have large enough endowment funds that they’re able to provide full-ride scholarships for mascots, and we really want to get to that point. We can give back to the guys on the current team and set them up to be in a really good position to do as well with Bucky as they can and take off some of this added stress from the other responsibilities they might have.”
Nelson said being a mascot added to his college experience.
“It was a pretty big reason why I stayed on for my fifth year,” he said. “Being able to be that involved in the campus and do that many different things and get back was a great experience.”