Soon, television cameras made a point to broadcast the moment, and a tradition was born.

“I would love to tell you it was the result of months of market research and focus groups, but it just kind of happened,” said Kluender, who is an assistant athletic director for marketing and promotions. “And that’s a reason it’s still so popular: it wasn’t scheduled or planned.”

The phrase “Jump Around” now appears on Wisconsin T-shirts and is such a part of Wisconsin’s identity that its fans become ornery when other universities attempt to adopt the phrase and the jumping that comes with it. When Kluender’s fiancée moved to Madison, she ordered a “Jump Around” credit card and impressed the credit union employees by telling them that her future husband started the tradition.

Image Wisconsin's Jacob Pedersen celebrating a touchdown catch with Jake Byrne against Oregon State this season in Madison, Wis. Credit... Morry Gash/Associated Press

But Kluender said the tradition officially became a phenomenon in 2003 when Pat Richter, then the athletic director, asked him before the home opener against Akron not to play the song. Camp Randall was under construction, and there was concern that the shaking could be dangerous.

Students were livid when the song did not come on between the third and fourth quarter. Some turned their backs to the field, and Kluender recalled that the focus became more about why the song was not played than the game itself. Calls, letters and e-mails flooded the news media and the athletic department, and a quick safety study was conducted. Soon, Chancellor John D. Wiley announced that “Jump Around” could be played the next week.

“It rose to the point where the chancellor of Wisconsin had to put out a press release about a 1990s song that our fans are attached to,” Kluender said. “It made me laugh that it rose to that level. It was played the following week and ever since.”

Oliva conducted a more thorough safety study over a year and a half, and concluded that the jumping was safe. He said in an e-mail that the actual motion during the jumping was only 0.4 inches. But it occurs with such frequency that humans are sensitive to it. “Thus the exaggerated level of perception,” he said. “I have been on the roof of the press box and observed standing waves in puddles of water after a rain and would have guessed that the motion was quite large myself if I hadn’t measured the much smaller amplitudes.”