Profiles In Courage, Part 1

By Johnny Ginter on July 16, 2010 at 7:01 am
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Now THAT is a REAL fan

I have a theory about fans that wear costumes to sporting events; no matter what your costume is, how ridiculous you appear to others is inversely proportional to how well your team is doing on the field. For example, in a speedo and painted to look like Brutus Buckeye in 20 degree weather while up by 25? Hell yeah buddy, lookin' slick! Dressed like a purple and yellow tiger, complete with fangs and whiskers, after losing by three touchdowns? Sorry sir, Popeye's Chicken expects a certain level of dress among its' clientele. You'll have to leave. What I'm getting at here is that it takes a commendable amount of intestinal fortitude to attend a public sporting event in the most garish and insane costume imaginable, and I hereby submit this post to analyze those Ohio State Fans who have stretched the limits of good taste, fashion, and common sense. Rather than a traditional biography, I will critique our beloved superfans based on three criteria: their look, act, and intangibles (since no sports related analysis would be complete without a totally abstract and subjective value judgement). Fans will be rated 1 through 5 on the John 3:16 Guy Scale.

Buck-I-Guy

Point, nod, repeat step one

Look: Buck-I-Guy has chosen to work with a cowboy motif, which makes zero sense for Ohio State but does have the advantage of allowing a black dude to wear a cowboy hat on national TV without anyone expecting him to yell "ANDWE'RECOMMMIINNN... TO YOUR CIIITTAAAYYY!!" Act: Consists entirely of pointing at the camera with both index fingers and nodding. May occasionally yell "WOOOO!" Intangibles: Is present at most games, and the camera generally finds him almost immediately, although a big fat dude in a white cowboy costume stands out pretty easily in any college football stadium north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Also has  his own Myspace page, which is not helping us eliminate the OSU fans = pedophiles meme.

Big Nut and BuckeyeMan

One of these guys is your dad

Look: My mental image of this dynamic duo getting geared up for games is like a 3 year old going through her mom's closet; just put on literally everything in sight. Also I'm pretty sure that the sheer amount of buckeyes BuckeyeMan wears qualifies him as a weapon of mass destruction. These guys are both delightfully terrifying. Act: "GO BUCKS!" *clap clap* "GO BUCKS!" *clap clap* xForever Intangibles: Both of these guys seem to be locked in a rivalry with Buck-I-Guy for TV face time, if those three guys are ever put in the same section there is gonna be a fight.

Lil' Tressels

Look: Jimmy T, high fashion icon.

The coolest kids you know

Act: These guys usually line up at the edge of the railing of the Block O student section (or the did, I don't know where they've gone since they shuffled the students around), and spend most of the game adjusting their Transitions™ glasses, folding their arms and staring pensively into space, and giving each other a list of things that ends in "...and so forth." Intangibles: Lady GaGa can go to hell. All this talk about her challenging what we think of as fashion is BS. The real challenge to contemporary thought about clothes comes from one awesomely stubborn college football coach and a horde of loyal followers who are turning possibly the nerdiest article of clothing this side of penny loafers into something people willingly wear in public. Godspeed, intrepid sweatervestateers. So that's it for part 1, next week is part 2 and will include my two favorite OSU superfans of all time. One is obvious, but if you think about some recent and popular players you will probably be able to figure out the second (actually a  group of fans). See you next week.

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