Madison state Rep. Dave Travis, who is hanging it up next year after serving 30 years in Wisconsin’s Legislature, says he’s never seen anything like it. He’s received more calls, letters and, in this modern age, e-mails about the Big Ten Network-cable television brouhaha than any other issue he’s been involved in.
People are just plain angry, he told me last week. They feel betrayed and they’re just as mad at the University of Wisconsin as they are at cable TV.
I agreed that’s about the same reaction we’re getting from readers here at the paper. In fact, it appears that the UW and the Big Ten Network have probably done the impossible — made the typically villainous and arrogant big cable networks the good guys.