7 Arguments Wisconsin and Minnesota Have Never Settled

The Wisconsin Badgers and Minnesota Golden Gophers have played each other in football 135 times since 1890, the most of any two schools in the sport.

Football is arguably the loudest fight among the two states.

But Wisconsinites and Minnesotans have been arguing about certain other things for just as long.

These are the arguments Wisconsin and Minnesota have never settled.

1. Paul Bunyan’s Axe

Wisconsin and Minnesota have settled many arguments on a football field, just never this one.

The Badgers and the Gophers have met every season but one since 1890, which makes theirs the longest-running rivalry in major college football.

The winner takes home Paul Bunyan’s Axe, a lumberjack-sized trophy that’s been on the line since 1948.

It’s Minnesota’s turn again.

The Gophers beat the Badgers 17-7 in the snow last November.

That win was their fourth in five years, and it pushed the all-time series to 64 wins for Minnesota against 63 for Wisconsin, with 8 ties.

One game a year keeps deciding who gets to brag.

If you grew up on either side of the border, you already know which team you’re supposed to root against every November.

2. Duck, Duck, Gray Duck

Minnesota is the only state in the country where kids grow up playing “duck, duck, gray duck” instead of “duck, duck, goose.”

Minnesotans will tell you theirs is the correct version.

Wisconsin plays goose like the other 49 states, and to a Minnesotan, that’s the version that sounds off.

Minnesota Vikings players have argued about this on the record: Kyle Rudolph and Adam Thielen didn’t even agree on what the game was called.

Rudolph used “duck, duck, goose,” the version nearly every other state plays.

Thielen, a Minnesota native, had never heard that version in his life and had no idea other states called the game something else.

Wisconsin sticks with goose.

So does every state bordering Minnesota, which makes the whole state a linguistic island in the middle of the Midwest.

Say “goose” instead of “gray duck” in Minnesota, and you’re likely to get a correction, not a shrug.

3. Bubbler vs. Drinking Fountain

Wisconsinites don’t just call the drinking fountain a “bubbler.”

Many treat any other word for it as flatly wrong.

One University of Wisconsin alumni magazine writer treats it as a matter of principle, refusing to use any other word for it, even out of state.

She’s not the only Wisconsinite who feels that strongly.

She also described asking Minnesotans for directions to a bubbler and getting nothing but blank stares every time she tried.

Minnesotans call the same fixture a drinking fountain, and to them, “bubbler” sounds like a made-up word.

It isn’t.

Kohler Company invented the fixture in 1888.

One popular account places a vintage model near Wisconsin’s state capitol, though that claim traces back to little more than a couple of Wikipedia photos.

Neither side has budged: Wisconsinites keep saying bubbler out of principle, and Minnesotans keep hearing a word that doesn’t exist.

4. Soda vs. Pop

Order a “pop” in a Wisconsin bar, and the bartender will just hand you a soda, no clarifying question needed.

It happens the other way at the register a few miles north, where asking for a “soda” gets you a look like you ordered in a foreign language.

A small 2007 University of Wisconsin-Stout student research project tested a handful of speakers on both sides of the border.

They found the same split researchers had mapped back in 2002: Wisconsin says soda, Minnesota says pop.

The sample was tiny, just seven people.

That’s more snapshot than verdict.

It lines up with what anyone who’s crossed that border already knows, though nothing has run the check again since.

That match didn’t settle anything: People crossing the line still argue about it, tease each other over it, or just stare blankly at whichever word they hear.

5. Brandy vs. Whiskey

Wisconsinites will argue the brandy Old Fashioned is the correct version, and out-of-staters, Minnesotans included, usually assume that’s a typo.

Wisconsin alone drinks more than half of all the Korbel brandy sold anywhere in the country, according to the company’s sales figures.

That’s not close.

Wisconsin lawmakers made it official in 2023: a resolution named the brandy Old Fashioned the state’s cocktail.

Minnesota bartenders keep reaching for whiskey without a second thought, and to a lot of Wisconsinites, that’s proof the rest of the country still doesn’t get it.

6. Packers vs. Vikings

The Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings have been division rivals every season since the Vikings joined the National Football League (NFL) in 1961.

The two have met 132 times since then, and Green Bay leads the all-time series, 67 wins to 62, with 3 ties.

It’s barely ahead.

That gap has stayed roughly that size for years, closing and widening a game or two at a time depending on the season.

Green Bay still plays home games outdoors on a field fans call the frozen tundra.

If you’ve never sat through a January game there, count yourself lucky.

Minnesota moved indoors under a fixed roof at U.S. Bank Stadium in 2016, and Packers fans haven’t let it go since.

Neither fan base has ever backed down, and if you’ve sat in either stadium, you’ve heard exactly why: Neither team has pulled far enough ahead to end the argument.

7. State Fair Bragging Rights

Minnesota’s State Fair drew 1,923,325 people in 2026, according to the fair’s final count.

Wisconsin’s State Fair drew 925,749 the same year, per its official tally.

It wasn’t even half.

Minnesota also runs its fair a day longer than Wisconsin does, 12 days against 11, which Minnesotans count as one more piece of evidence.

It’s the kind of argument you’ll hear repeated at just about every border-town diner.

Wisconsinites just point you to the cream puff line.