Fanaticism strikes at Ohio

by Joe Arnold
Staff Writer

This is the second part of three part series looking at fanaticism in sports.

In the seconds following Akron’s 74-73 win against the Ohio basketball team last January, Zips’ forward Andy Hipsher gestured and taunted an angry O-Zone crowd as he left the floor. His actions brought security personnel to their feet and brought back memories for current Ohio assistant basketball coach and former player John Rhodes.

Rhodes played at Ohio from 1984 to 1988 and returned as a coach four years ago. Although not condoning its actions that evening, Rhodes chalked up the O-Zone crowd’s actions to disappointment and shock. At Ohio, basketball and hockey have proven to be two sports that sometimes have fans teetering on the edge of healthy team spirit and uncontrollable fanaticism.

Rhodes did not hesitate in naming a moment when he was embarrassed by an Ohio fan’s actions.

“The worst thing I saw as a player was someone getting spit on when he was taking the ball out in front of what is now the O-Zone,” Rhodes said. “It was bad. It was my last home game against Eastern Michigan. Grant Long beat me in my own gym in front of my mom.”

Not all of Rhodes’ memories as a player have been negative, he said. He remembered a tip-off tradition in which the first Ohio basket brought on a downpour of hundreds of feet of toilet paper — thrown onto the floor by the Bobcats’ faithful.

“There was a three-and-a-half to five-minute fiasco,” he said. “As a player you were covering up like it was a bomb scare.”

The bath-tissue tidal wave did not last long. Conference officials put a stop to the tradition after it began interfering with the game, Rhodes said.

Fans following the Ohio club hockey team are no different from the zealots that pack the sideline bleachers in The Convo every winter. Bird Arena has long since been a place where fans’ activity has bordered on the insane, coach Dan Morris said.

“They always come in (before games) and they want to know about opposing teams,” he said. “Penn State had a player whose last name was Zuck. They got creative with that. You can imagine the names they came up with.”

The hockey team’s fan base is one rooted in tradition. For the 25 years he has been associated with the team, Coordinator of Off-Ice Officials Marvin Fletcher said he has seen almost everything. The chants and taunts that fans come armed with now pale in comparison to the actions of some fans before the legal drinking age was increased in 1987, and Bird Arena stopped selling beer at games.

“There were a lot of incidences of fans pouring beer on players, but no major disruptions,” Fletcher said. “They used profanity back then, and they still use it now.

“I can remember when my kids were little and on Saturday mornings we’d go to the arena for minor (youth) hockey, and the place would smell like a brewery.”

Morris, too, said he remembers stories of Bird Arena, beer and booze.

“They used to back the beer trucks right into the rink through a garage door,” Morris said. “I’m sure ice started out white, by the end of the game, it probably had a brown tint thanks to some of the libations thrown onto the ice.”

The alcohol problem was not limited to just hockey fans, Rhodes said.

“People were a lot more juiced up back then,” he said. “Everybody had a flask. Everybody had kegs and eggs, and that is when keg parties were allowed in the dorms.”