Q and A with Jason Gay

Filled with a record-breaking 8,679 graduates, Camp Randall was the site of UW–Madison’s spring 2025 commencement.

Jason Gay, a 1992 UW grad who is now the Wall Street Journal’s sports columnist, brought his unique brand of humor, with a speech focusing on the Badger women’s hockey recent national championship win over Ohio State. He compared the overtime last-second penalty shot by Kirsten Simms x’26 to graduation, telling them to “seize the moment.”

Before commencement, we talked to Jason about his message, the things that make UW–Madison so special, and his observations on life and sports.

What’s different from writing a speech that you’re going to deliver at commencement to your day job of writing for the Wall Street Journal?

Well, you might have a bunch of people read a sports column in a newspaper, but there’s nothing like the experience of reading something out loud to people all at once, and there’s something really exhilarating and, frankly, terrifying about that idea, but I’m incredibly honored at the opportunity.

Is it something about hearing your voice actually saying the words that you had written down, echoing through this entire huge complex?

Absolutely. Honestly, when I hear my voice piping through speakers, I just start to worry what Muppet do I sound like? Do I sound like Kermit? Am I more of a Fozzie? I panic about that.

Commencement speech number two! First in 2019, now in 2025. How do you approach this?

I assumed I was one and done, so I’m really psyched to have the opportunity to come back. It’s hard to go back and watch yourself speak. It’s sort of mortifying, even if you feel you did all right. I don’t want to listen to myself for 20 minutes, so I kind of tried to start over again. It’s a different message, obviously a different class, a different time in Madison history, but the energy is remarkable. Being able to do it outside [at] Camp Randall, that’s going to be an entirely new experience. All of that is just a thrill.

What’s the one takeaway that you hope the students come away with?

As a sports writer, I was incredibly drawn to the women’s hockey team winning the national championship this year, and it made me think about goals and achievement and the idea of purpose. The idea of what is going to drive you through your life and what is going to be your personal purpose. So basically, trying to pivot off this incredible accomplishment by the hockey team for a bigger message to the student population. Honestly, I’m just trying to glide off of the popularity of the hockey team. I will make no lies about that.

That’s a good strategy. Your student days: Can you describe what a typical day was like when you were a student? What memory is going to stick with you?

I would wake up early, around 2:30 p.m., have breakfast, get going on my day, usually with a big cup of coffee at the [Memorial] Union, and then head out to class or the library, herever I was obligated that day. I was pretty good about getting to class. I’d pride myself on the fact that I had a pair of ski goggles that I would wear on my bike on especially cold days. But look, the halls of Wisconsin history are not filled with my report cards, but it was an incredible, magical experience to be a student here, and I can’t believe that I actually feel even more energized about being in Madison than I did when I was a student here. When you think about it, when you’re 19 years old, you’re grumpy and you have a lot of opinions about the world and like now, it’s “Wow, it’s pretty great around here.”

What’s something you hope will never change at the university?

I very much hope that the Field House stays part of the athletic program here at Wisconsin. It is an incredible barn. It’s got great history. It has a world-class volleyball team playing in there now. The atmosphere, you can’t beat it. I just hope that that is part of what Wisconsin athletics remains. It’s just a great, great feeling to be in there.

What advice would you give your UW student self?

There’s going to be a thing that comes along called the internet, and everyone’s going to be walking around with a phone, so you’re never going to miss out on getting to somewhere, a party, a class. You’re going to get reminders. You might even have a watch that tells you what time to wake up. I mean, the influx of technology has just radicalized being a person in the world. Some of it, of course, I worry about, and some of it I’m not a big fan of, but I think if I were to tell my younger student Badger self what everyday life was like for a student today, they’d be rather stunned. They’d be like, “What do you mean everyone has a phone?” I mean, I’m so old that the ATM was a modern fascination at Madison when I was there. You get money out of this box on the road? Are you kidding me?

What’s your take on where we sit now in terms of college athletics?

It’s hard to find a world that has changed more than college athletics over the last 20 to 30 years. Even in the last five, we’ve seen radical change with the expansion of name, image, likeness; with the transfer portal; with universities on the precipice of now directly paying students. It’s just a completely different environment, and it’s created a whole new structure and a whole new obligation of the schools to develop these programs, raise money for these programs. A lot of athletic directors have much, much harder jobs than they ever did before. I think about sort of the stresses and the strains that are on universities now if they want to stay competitive. But the thing that I admire about Wisconsin is that there’s a consistency to not just the big-time sports, but all sports and there’s great, great enthusiasm for sports across the spectrum here. There are great fan bases, great traditions. I think that’s one of the things that makes Madison special as a sports school, and of course, it’s always a little sweeter to beat Michigan in anything. I’ll take a win over Michigan in any event.

Do you have a favorite sports story from the last year or so?

It’s hard to argue with the women’s hockey team. I mean, that is just one of the all-time, comeback victories. I mean, the idea of a penalty goal, 18 seconds left, winning in overtime, both goals by Kirsten Simms. Incredible tradition here — eight national championships. This is as good a team as we’ve ever seen in women’s hockey. The growth of that sport, the growth of women’s sports in general, I think is one of the most amazing things that’s happened in collegiate sports over the last generation, and that I feel we’re just scratching the surface. I feel it’s going to get bigger and stronger.

Why do we need sports right now?

I think sports has great purpose. This is something that I want to talk about is the idea that sports has a role in our lives in terms of showing that teamwork is rewarded and that sacrifice is rewarded. Sports is something with rules, with boundaries, with shared facts. We agree that the score is the score. It’s four to three, and it stays four to three. It’s not whatever score you want to say it is. I think sports is somewhat of a ballast in what’s an increasingly chaotic world. I mean, you don’t come after a football game. It’s like, “Well, actually, I think I won. I won the sporting event. I don’t know what you guys saw.”