Question For The Masses

Wow. Three days from this very moment I’ll be on my basement couch, having rocked Hey Buckeyes! on the stereo all day with my Block O flag hanging off the front porch of my house. I don’t know about anyone else, but I plan on tearing through the bulk of a 24-pack of some inexpensive domestic brew and yelling at my projector screen for a good three hours Thursday night.

In short, I’m so excited about the opening of college football season I could crap my pants.

Which leads me – if a bit graphically – to something that occurred to me the other day. My kids got their OSU jerseys for this season via UPS – a white #2 for my daughter and a red #1 for my son*. I have watched College Gameday probably every Saturday since its inception and one thing that always sticks out to me watching games in Columbus vs. other places is the sheer number of people rocking the Buckeyes’ jerseys on game day. And I’m one of the worst, with a personal collection that has included the following:

  • #11 (Antoine Winfield)
  • #8 (Steve Bellisari – err… Drew Carter)
  • #16 (Dr. Krenzel) – although this one wasn’t a Nike jersey and it used to piss me off because the stripes on the sleeves were wrong, so I only had this jersey for about 3 weeks.
  • #7 (Teddy Ginn, Joe Germaine, Joey Galloway)
  • #10 (St. Troy)
  • #28 (Beanie)
  • #2 (Cris Carter, Mike Doss, TP)

So I guess I have a bit of a personal stake in thinking the jersey-as-gameday-uniform is one of the unique little twists that OSU has.

* – an aside for those of you without kids: Jerseys are expensive and kids grow too fast for one to last more than two seasons, tops. It freaking sucks. But we do what we must to remain true to tradition.

I haven’t done any in-depth research on this – just in case any member of the A-Team feels obligated to jump into the comments and point this out – but it seems to me that this is the case. I know for a fact that at Air Force games very few fans rock the jersey, which isn’t really saying much. Most Air Force fans are like the good natured little league parents, cheering for any big play, no matter which team had it, bringing jello-molds and Rice Krispie Treats to the games, and hoping to go home knowing that darn it, everyone just had a really good time. I drop more f-bombs between my bed and the alarm in the morning than the entire capacity of Falcon Stadium does during a game against Navy or Army. But I digress…

Can anyone else think of a college football team whose supporters wear their team’s jerseys in similar proportion to ours? Does anyone else go along with my “white jerseys are for girls, scarlet jerseys are for guys” mantra? Am I just partially insane or full-blown bat-s#&@ crazy? And is Marshall as good on offense as they are if you’re playing them in NCAA 11 on All-American or Heisman difficulty?

I leave these questions to you.

Comments

  1. I’ve only been to a couple away game locations:

    Indiana-Nothing but Ohio State fans and pissed off Bloomington residents who can’t get a bagel at their favorite diner the following Sunday after a Buckeye stomping of the Hoosiers.

    Penn State-They rock the Jersey’s fo’sho. 300-500 thousand people and mostly PSU fans…lot’s of that ugly dark blue jersey.

    I rock the Hawk and Troy Smith jersey’s. And I do so depending on what facet of the game needs my help the most. Last year for USC I wore the Hawk jersey….the defense showed up and punched USC in the junk, but the offense was flat out bad. I should have worn both.

    The wife has a #7 jersey and an Eddie George jersey…both Scarlet. I refuse to buy her a white jersey as she is a slob and would ruin it within 11 minutes (same reason I don’t have a white one of my own).

    Stop playing on Heisman. Use AA and use sliders found on operationsports.com in their forums for NCAA. There, I just proved I’m a nerd.

  2. That’s a good point. Anecdotal though it may be, I do know a couple PSU fans and they did sport jerseys as well. Maybe it’s a Big Ten thing, because down south there seems to be a lot more of the “get dressed up and go to the game with the rest of my frat/sorority” thing going on.

    I’ll have to check the sliders out. I used to play on Varsity but the last few years I decided beating every team I played 56-0 was boring. This year I’ve been playing on AA but still have some annoyances. I bet the sliders will fix the problems though. My gamertag is Bacon Ninja 16 by the way, should anyone like to add me and beat the crap out of me on the game.

  3. A couple friends went to schools down south. One went to Alabama and one went to North Carolina. They both said most of the girls dressed up for games…sun dresses, full makeup and stupid hats.

  4. El Kaiser makes fun of me every time I walk into his house wearing my no 7 jersey. He says I am to old to pull it off lol.

    I have rocked the Eddie George, Orlando Pace, Kirk Herbstriet, and now Ted Ginn Jr.

    I will wear my jersey in my basement Thursday night and I also force my wife and kids to wear jerseys every gameday the kids dont mind but the wife hates it but she knew what she was signing up for when she married this rocker of the jersey.

  5. @Johnny – I take it Mrs. Utah isn’t a reader of the site? I can’t believe you besmirched the woman of your dreams like that.

    As for myself, I’m a simple gray t-shirt with college font letter (like http://www.buckeyecorner.com/products2.cfm/ID/103/c/mens-t-shirts/brand/CHAMPION). I’m a simple kind of guy. BUT, I have been considering that it’s time I finally pick up a jersey for myself. Right now, I’m thinking a 28 for Beanie. I wield a Stiff Arm of Justice, too. Just ask my kids.

  6. She reads it…kinda why I wrote what I did…hahahaha.

    I also believe it is legal to take on the powers of the person who’s jersey you are wearing. Examples:

    When wearing:

    Hawks jersey: Legally able to tackle anyone in site.

    Chris Wells: Legally allowed to stiff arm anyone in site.

    Pace: Legally allowed to pancake anyone facing you.

    Mike Hart: Legally allowed to run your mouth and immediately lose four games in a row to Ohio State.

    Paterno (sunglasses/micro goggles): If wearing these you are legally allowed to defecate in public.

    Tate Forcier: Legally allowed to throw many things that you posses to strangers…never to see them again.

  7. I remember back in the day I showed up to one of my first college gamedays ever wearing my PACE jersey. He was OSU heisman hopeful and I made a butt load of pancakes and took them there and threw them on the set while they were talking on TV. The next year when I went back for a gameday at the shoe…… they had nets up around the set lol. I am not saying I caused them to do this but I am sure I didnt help.

  8. I like a handful of college football teams (none as much as the Buckeyes) and I don’t think I’ve seen any other stadiums with as many jerseys being rocked as in the Shoe. Toledo Rockets fans aren’t big on jerseys (I rarely see them around town). I can’t remember seeing any the few times I’ve visited East Lansing… Hm. I don’t want to think about what happens in the fever swamps of the SEC, so we’ll skip them. I think USC has jersey-wearers in respectable numbers.

    Oh yeah, I hates me some Marshall. On my old PS2 NCAA games (I’ve had 05, 07, and 09), they always stink and never play me tough, even at all-american level. in real life, one of the best games I’ve ever seen was the 2001 MAC Championship where Marshall was up by 3 tds and blew the game to UT with Chester Taylor leading the charge (that was the one where UT’s kicker scored on a fake fg and as a celebration threw himself against the goalpost and injured himself, but that’s awesome because how many kickers get to score tds).

Leave a Reply to Johnny UtahCancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: