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Our American Stories

A Player’s View of the University of Wisconsin Stampede

Our American Stories

iHeartPodcasts

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.6817 Ratings

🗓️ 27 March 2026

⏱️ 11 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On this episode of Our American Stories, when a stadium full of excited sports fans pressed downhill against inadequate crowd control, tragedy struck in an instant. Michael Brin, a player on the field that day and now an emergency physician, shares his harrowing story of the infamous University of Wisconsin stampede and its aftermath.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

This is an I-Heart podcast.

0:02.3

Guaranteed human.

0:14.1

And we continue with our American stories.

0:17.8

In 1992, Michael Bryn was a freshman at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

0:23.8

He earned a spot as a walk-on to the University of Wisconsin football team.

0:28.9

Midway through the 1993 season, as the Badgers were starting to demonstrate just how

0:33.8

good a program they'd become, an epic game was played at Camp Randall, the Wisconsin

0:39.5

home stadium. Here is Dr. Michael Bryn himself to tell us a story of what is known in Wisconsin

0:46.3

as the Camp Randall Stampede. It's 1993. I was a pre-med student who was given a chance

0:53.3

to walk on to play for the University

0:54.9

Wisconsin Badgers football team. We had come off a disappointing year in 1992, but that

1:00.3

1993 team was different. We started hot. We knew that we had the chance to reach all the goals

1:06.7

that we had set before us in the beginning of the year, and that was to win the Big Ten and get to the Rose Bowl.

1:14.3

We've always had some of the craziest, rowdiest, most loyal fans anywhere in the country, let

1:18.9

alone the Big Ten.

1:20.2

Our test, the next obstacle that we had in our way to prove that we were the real deal,

1:25.8

was the University of Michigan Wolverines. Michigan was the

1:28.9

perennial powerhouse in the Big Ten, getting to the Rose Bowl the year before winning the

1:32.5

Big Ten. They were in our way. The game comes and we're ready for it. And this is the place

1:40.6

they call the camp. Everybody on that team, offense, defense special teams, we were clicking. It was probably one of the

1:47.0

most exciting games I've ever been a part of. I still remember Terrell Fletcher making a little cut in the backfield and scoring a long touchdown to really put us ahead for the end of the game.

1:55.0

Fletcher, Fox turned to the backfield, he breaks the tackle, Fletcher to the 10, Fletcher, Fletcher,

...

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