The Wisconsin State Journal’s Andy Baggot creates his own UW version of the Beloit College Mindset List:

When thousands of 18-year-old freshmen descend upon Madison and the University of Wisconsin campus next week they will bring more than wide eyes, a sense of adventure and a credit card revving its engine.

They will come with a specific window of knowledge about the Badgers, a reality tethered to the fact they were born in 1995. This means they come here with great expectations and, likely, a profound sense of sports-related entitlement.

Their earliest memories likely began in 1998, so they don’t know a world without UW basketball and hockey games at the Kohl Center, don’t know what it’s like to lose a Paul Bunyan Axe football game to archrival Minnesota at Camp Randall Stadium and don’t know a period when the Big Ten Conference actually had 10 members. …

“Jump Around’’ has always ushered in the fourth quarter of football games at Camp Randall.

Matt Lepay has always been the Voice of the Badgers.

Mark Johnson has always been a hockey coach. …

Bud Selig, a 1956 grad, has always been commissioner of Major League Baseball.

NCAA men’s basketball tournament berths for the Badgers are an annual occurrence.

UW football games at Camp Randall have never drawn fewer than 73,000. …

UW has always held its own against Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State in football.

The Badgers have always had the upper hand over Indiana in men’s basketball. …

It’s commonplace for the Badgers to win consecutive Big Ten football titles.

Absolutely nothing on that list was the case when I was a UW freshman 30 years ago. The only similarities between then and now would be UW’s colors (even though the current red isn’t really “cardinal”) and the fact that Mike Leckrone is the UW Marching Band director. (Leckrone has been the band director for eight football coaches — John Coatta, John Jardine, Dave McClain, Jim Hilles, Don Mor(t)on, Barry Alvarez, Bret Bielema and Gary Andersen — along with eight men’s basketball coaches — John Powless, Bill Cofield, Steve Yoder, Stu Jackson, Stan Van Gundy, Dick Bennett, Brad Soderberg and Bo Ryan — and three men’s hockey coaches — Bob Johnson, Jeff Sauer and Mike Eaves,)

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal created a graphic , explained thusly …

To rank the teams’ 2013 prospects, we calculated a composite of four 1-through-125 rankings: Athlon, Lindy’s, the Orlando Sentinel and football guru Phil Steele. The shame component is based on five categories: each team’s four-year Academic Progress Rate (APR) figure, the metric the NCAA uses to assess academic performance; recent history of major violations and probation; percentage of athletic-department revenues subsidized by student fees; number of player arrests in the off-season, and a purely subjective, overall “ick” factor. (Sorry, Penn State.)

… that should make Badger football fans feel good:

The X axis represents wins and losses, while the Y axis represents the amount of NCAA and legal trouble the team and its players, respectively, have gotten into over the past season. By their measure you want to be in the upper right, and that’s where Wisconsin, along with Northwestern, Minnesota, Indiana, Michigan State and Michigan are.

The Journal also has a map that shows off, by county, college football loyalties as measured by Facebook. For those who observe Wisconsin’s politics and conclude we’re hopelessly divided, note the one color in the Badger State: