Murphy’s L.A. Law Plagues Badger Fans

Yes, Wisconsin won the Rose Bowl game.

But winning isn’t everything. And for 137 Badger fans, a bad weekend only got worse Sunday when they couldn’t fly home from a game many of them didn’t get to. Their plane was stuck in airport asphalt.

“It really has been a nightmare,� said Wisconsin stockbroker Steve Berg. “We just had all the bad luck that we could have.�

Even the home snows of the frozen Dairy State had to look good to the University of Wisconsin fans, after their warm weekend in Los Angeles disintegrated into a real-life remake of “The Out-of-Towners.�

On Sunday, the 137 fans sat fuming for nearly an hour and a half aboard their chartered Boeing 727 at Van Nuys Airport. Finally, the plane started rolling toward the runway--and two wheels plunged through the asphalt.

Then, as the passengers were being taken off the plane, two tour operators nearly came to blows arguing over who had screwed up the worst.

There were plenty of screw-ups to go around.

A bus hired to ferry Badger fans from one hotel to the airport for the flight home to Madison failed to show, and they had to commandeer a convoy of taxis.

And not many got within cheering distance of the Granddaddy of Bowl Games that they came for: all of them had gotten stiffed on the tickets they thought they had bought weeks ago, and many ended up watching Wisconsin’s victory on a TV in a Studio City restaurant.

By Sunday evening, they were dispiritedly organizing a pool on when--or if--they’d get home. (Word was they were to leave LAX at 2:15 a.m. today, but few would have bet the farm on it.)

“At least they won the football game,� said an FAA controller at Van Nuys Airport who declined to give his name. “It must be UCLA’s revenge.�

“This is just one more thing that could go wrong,� sighed Jeff Manley, owner of a Madison travel agency that booked some of the passengers on the trip, after fans were taken to a Van Nuys hotel.

“At least the hotel hasn’t burned down yet.�

Berg, the stockbroker, was frantically canceling business appointments in the hotel where dozens of dejected Wisconsin fans, still in victorious red and white, wandered the halls, drinking beer and bemoaning their fate.

On another phone, Manley heard the other shoe drop: A second charter plane his agency had helped to book for 356 more Wisconsin fans was supposed to leave LAX about 9 p.m. Sunday. But when the crew aboard the chartered DC-10 landed at the airport, they said they had put in too much air time that day, and refused to take off until this morning.

“We’re jinxed,� sighed Manley.

Indeed, the fans’ troubles started back in Wisconsin, when their plane out of Madison was delayed for two hours Thursday night after a water spigot froze and they had to fly without coffee.

Everything was supposed to be ready for them once they hit sunny warm L.A. Their $1000 or so was supposed to cover air fare, a hotel room and a ticket to the game. But it turned out that vouchers they had been given for game tickets would not be honored.

By New Year’s Day, after spending hours chasing down the promised phantom tickets, some fans had resigned themselves to watching their beloved Badgers on the tube at a restaurant in the Sportsmen’s Lodge in Studio City.

A few Badger boosters, however, set out in a frantic, last-ditch search for scalpers.

Craig Gobel, 22, a University of Wisconsin senior who flew out with his parents and a brother, trudged out to Pasadena on game day and “met scalpers from all over the United States� outside the Rose Bowl.

Desperate, Gobel offered his $500 Gianni watch with a single diamond to one scalper. “He looked at me and acted insulted and walked away,� Gobel said.

Even the Badgers’ victory over UCLA couldn’t quite pull it together for some Madison fans.

After a night of revelry over the Badgers’ victory, the fans were scheduled to fly out of the Van Nuys airport at 9:15 a.m. Sunday, said Manley. But one bus chartered for the fans failed to show up at a Wilshire district hotel, and Manley had to hurriedly hire a small flotilla of cabs.

It was a disorganized flotilla.

Kristi Massey, 36, from Cottage Grove, Wis., said the driver of her cab got hopelessly lost. “We drove around an hour because we couldn’t find this place,� she said.

At last, the passengers were herded aboard the plane. Where they waited. For nearly 90 minutes.

Finally, about 10:30 a.m., the plane began to roll along the taxiway. But after about 100 yards, the passengers felt a bump. A flight attendant, almost in tears, told the fans the plane was stuck. Its two main wheels had sunk more than a foot into the asphalt.

Ron Kochevar, the airport’s manager, said the plane broke through a thinly paved section of asphalt near the terminal that is not typically used by heavier jets. Kochevar said the plane’s wheels sank into dirt after breaking through the asphalt, which he said is only about two inches thick in that spot. By late Sunday, crews had freed the plane.