Wisconsin is home to some of the best beer in the world. It’s also the starting point for some of the greatest football players in the NFL.
So when the University of Wisconsin asked former Badger All-American and future NFL Hall of Famer J.J. Watt to speak at the school’s graduation ceremony in 2019, he made the logical decision to combine the two. Watt’s big idea to make his commencement speech legendary was an extremely Wisconsin one. He was gonna buy a beer for every matriculating student at Camp Randall Stadium that afternoon.
Not just any beer, either. New Glarus Brewery’s famed Spotted Cow farmhouse ale. But since Camp Randall is only known for housing drunk students and not making them that way (and a bunch of legal issues), the university shot down the idea.
Here’s Watt telling his story to Chris Long on Long’s Green Light podcast.
“I was talking to the university and I really wanted to do something special and cool. I was trying to find a way to make [my speech] memorable,” Watt told Long.
“I was talking to the university and said this is what I want to do. Spotted Cow is the best beer in Wisconsin. It’s incredible. I want to put a Spotted Cow under every single seat in the stadium. I’ll pay for it all … but at the end of the commencement speech I’m gonna say ‘now to congratulate you, just reach under your seat and have a cold one on me.’
“And then [UW management] were like ‘yeah, we can’t do that legally.'”
It’s a great story, even if Spotted Cow isn’t even the best beer New Glarus makes (it’s probably top 10 though, just because everything they do is awesome. Particularly the Oktoberfest, which goes perfectly with college football. Just saying). Watt tried to come up with a compromise that would instead give each grad a free beer at the Terrace at Memorial Union — the lakeside student center/beer cellar that should be a selling point for any prospective Wisconsin student — but had that idea shot down as well.
It’s a bummer, but knowing UW students it’s safe to suggest they probably found other ways to procure beer that weekend. And every weekend that followed, until the heat death of the universe.