Wofford 101: Who Is Wisconsin Playing Saurday

Thanks to Nico Savidge of The Daily Cardinal for answering the question all Badgers fans are asking this week: what is a Wofford and why is UW playing them Saturday morning at Camp Randall?



And, Wofford hosts the annual summer training camp of the NFL's Carolina Panthers, who's website waxes poetic about the campus, the school's athletics, and it's alum:

The Terriers are members of the historic Southern Conference. Wofford is the smallest college in the nation to play NCAA Division I-AA football. The school fields intercollegiate athletic teams in 17 sports, composed of nine men's sports (baseball, basketball, cross country, football, golf, rifle, soccer, tennis, and track) and eight women's sports (basketball, cross country, golf, rifle, soccer, tennis, track, and volleyball).

Wofford is among the nation's leaders in graduation rates for athletes and producing Academic All-Americans. Wofford student-athletes graduate at a higher rate than the overall student body. Activities, such as the Players' Speakers Bureau, put athletes in the community as role models for area youth.

Among its alumni, the athletic program counts Carolina Panthers Owner/Founder Jerry Richardson, who played two seasons in the NFL for the Baltimore Colts. Other prominent alums include former Air Force Head Football Coach Fisher DeBerry and more recently, Wendy Nix, a two-year golf team captain and now reporter, commentator and anchor for ESPN.

Wofford consistently has scored high on the National Survey of Student Engagement, which measures the level of academic challenge, active and collaborative learning, student-faculty interaction, enriching educational experiences, and a supportive campus environment.

Wofford can be found in numerous commercial and non-commercial college guides, including U.S. News & World Report's "America's Best Colleges," The Princeton Review College Guide, The Fiske Guide to Colleges, The (Yale) Insider's Guide to the Colleges, and Peterson's Colleges for Top Students. The college consistently lands on "best value" lists in many of these publications. Wofford ranks fifth in the country in the percentage of undergraduates receiving credit for studying abroad according to Open Doors 2008, an annual report published by the New York-based Institute of International Education.

Wofford's entire 170-acre campus is at national arboretum, which was named the Roger Milliken Arboretum at Wofford College in 2008 in honor of the longtime trustee and benefactor. Affiliated with the United Methodist Church, the college is committed to quintessential undergraduate education within the context of values-based inquiry.



There you go: dazzle your friends at tomorrow's tailgate, and impress those sitting next to you at Camp Randall with your vast array of Wofford knowledge. You'll either sound like an ESPN/NCAA college football savant, or a postman who used to hang out at a Boston bar--I think it was called. "Cheers".