While UW-Madison lost the Rose Bowl, it beat out every higher education institution in the nation in terms of brand presence on the Internet in 2010.
The university's global impact on the Internet and social media ranked number one, higher than Harvard and Yale, according to a survey released last week.
The survey was a TrendTopper MediaBuzz Internet analysis published by The Global Language Monitor, which uses a mathematical model to make statistically significant comparisons among collected data.
In this case, the data was the level of a college's brand presence on the Internet.
The data was collected from the Internet, social media, blogosphere and top 75,000 print and electronic media.
According to The Global Language Monitor, the ranking is an unbiased reflection of what is being said and felt about these institutions rather than their academic ratings.
Following UW-Madison, University of Chicago came in second place and Harvard in third.