Boulder / Colorado

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Article Published: Monday, October 27, 2003

big 12 football

CU fans not so bad to this 'OU backer'

 

By Bill Briggs Denver Post Sports Writer

 

Buffaloes fans, it's time to face an ugly truth - aside from your football team, that is.

 

All across the heartland, you are considered by many to be the meanest fans in the Big 12 Conference, spewing equal parts beer and bad language at folks who don't happen to dress in black and gold. Your reputation stinks worse than Ralphie's pen.

 

According to recent Folsom Field visitors from Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Nebraska, they have been bopped with batteries, spattered with spit, punched in the neck, shoved in the back, cursed for wearing crimson, belittled as "hillbillies" and - in one case - urinated on. (Just so you know, there's no "p" in team.) The CU student section gets much of the blame. But not all.

 

"Your fans are notoriously lewd and unsportsmanlike," Justin Stout, a Kansas State student, told me last week. "The ultimate in poor fans."

 

One stunning indictment came from within the Buffs' own family, from a CU backer named Dan. "I hate to say this," he told me, "but I think you will find out that CU fans - students mostly - are by far the worst fans in the Big 12."

 

Fair or not, this is the not-so- golden helmet you collectively wear these days. Similarly bitter calls and e-mails to The Denver Post prompted the newspaper to send me to each Big 12 venue this fall to compare the Longhorns faithful, the Huskers lovers and the rest of the conference rowdies. At each stadium, I wear the visiting team's colors to taste a big gulp of home crowd hospitality.

 

Week 7 in this tour - Oklahoma at Colorado - offered a football test for Gary Barnett's boys and a chance to examine the theory of Buffs acting badly. I wore a crimson-and-cream Oklahoma sweat shirt, strolled through tailgate parties, sat with OU fans, walked through the student section and circled the CU stadium three times. A quick synopsis: You're not as bad as they say.

 

Using the exact critiques of your rival fans, here's a blow-by-blow assessment from the OU game:

 

* Claim No. 1 - "I have never taken so much abuse from home team fans as I have in Boulder," Walter Hill, a 62-year-old Sooners fan from Oklahoma City, shared with me before the game.

 

The Saturday night reality: One woman in Sooners garb said she saw CU fans toss lit cigarettes at other OU rooters, including some children. The main items I saw thrown were angry looks after Sooners scores.

 

* Claim No. 2 - Again from Hill: "If I were you, I sure would not pose as an OU fan. You will surely risk life and limb."

 

The Saturday night reality: Limbs remained intact. Life, well that's another story.

 

* Claim No. 3 - Back to Stout's comments that CU fans are "unsportsmanlike."

 

The Saturday night reality: CU fans strafed one sideline referee with f-bombs after a questionable call. But there were only a few boos for the Sooners' players. (Nebraska actually earned the most boos - when its winning score was flashed in the stadium.) After the game, which the top-ranked Sooners won 34-20, I heard several homers tell the OU rooters they had the best team in the land and wished them a safe drive home.

 

* Claim No. 4 - Describing past trips to Folsom Field, Jim Waite, a 76-year-old Oklahoma City resident, said: "On several occasions, we were showered with beer, a solid stream, slung in an arc, apparently to get as many of us as possible."

 

The Saturday night reality: One OU fan said she saw folks wearing black and gold hurl several cups of what appeared to be beer at an Oklahoma section.

 

* Claim No. 5 - "CU fans threw batteries and rocks wrapped in marshmallows at the Tech band last year," said Bill Langford, who graduated from Texas Tech in 1987 and now lives in Atlanta.

 

The Saturday night reality: CU students engaged in a marshmallow war at halftime, peppering each other with the mushy white blobs until a hail stone-like pile collected in the stadium's southeast corner. A few saved their candy bombs for the OU players as they lined up to receive the second-half kickoff. A dozen or so marshmallows made it to the players' cleats.

 

* Claim No. 6 - Folsom Field "is a wasteland of ignorant and, apparently, uncouth fans. To say that my family - which includes the Husker Nation - will never return to Folsom Field is the sports understatement of the decade," Nebraska backer Tim Butler wrote to The Post after a recent game. In a follow-up interview last week, Butler said, "Old ladies and young people alike screamed angry f-bombs while walking to our seats."

 

The Saturday night reality: The language can get a little rugged. One OU fan told me he was "cussed out six times" because he wore an Oklahoma hat. But that's true of many Big 12 venues these days, including Iowa State and Kansas. And as far as rival fans never coming back to Folsom Field, Sooners fans packed the north end of the stadium and sometimes drowned out CU rooters with their cheers.

 

Boorishness may be fueled by success. The Buffs' sudden jump into the top 10 in 1989 and into the 1990s unleashed decades of doormat frustrations. It also sparked small uprisings of rudeness that seem to have tainted CU fans throughout the Big 12.

 

But with humility comes hospitality. This season, CU has sputtered to a 3-5 record and many of the home fans seem to have lost their angry steam. Even our usher in Section 1 predicted before the opening kickoff Saturday: "You're going to kick our butts."

 

Still, one glassy-eyed frat boy found something to brag about when we crossed paths during the game: "Hey, we're No. 1 in partying, man! It's the battle of No. 1s!"

 

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,3...1725813,00.html