The red sea

× Expand Dan Koehn. Camp Randall on game day is not an event. It is a weather system. By 8 a.m., the air around Regent Street smells like charcoal, bratwurst and beer. By 10 a.m., the roads have begun to blur into rivers of red. By kickoff, Madison has stopped behaving like a city and becomes a single, throbbing organism wrapped around a concrete bowl. I have technically been inside Camp Randall exactly once. My husband’s company had a box: open bar, heat lamps, catered snacks, the kind of experience where football arrives with a cheese board and a climate-control strategy. It was lovely. It was also not quite the same as being in the bowl. It felt like listening to a symphony orchestra from a soundproof booth: close enough to see the bows move, but not where the music lives. I spent that game behind glass. Now, years later, I spend every game behind glass again. This time, it’s a windshield.

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