Waiting is the hardest part
After 10 hours in the Spectrum Saturday, I’m not sure what kind of violent acts I would have perpetrated had the Aggies not taken care of the Wolf Pack 77-63.
You see, I arrived early – 12:15 p.m. to be exact – to observe, as a kind of experiment in the science of fanhood, the behaviors and rituals of hardcore Aggie fans who get to the Spectrum four, five and six hours before the doors open at 6 p.m. sharp.
I was the seventh squatter just inside the glass doors on the south end of the Spectrum, escaping the cold and establishing my rights to the best seats in the house. I would find out later there was a whole other colony of like-minded fanatics camped on the east side of the Spectrum.
With a knock on the glass doors, I was in, a foreign – but welcome – visitor to the normally small group of die-hards that populate this particular part of the Spectrum on a game day.
It’s kind of an exclusive club, but the password is easy to remember: A few raps on the glass door, Aggie blue, a nod or audible “What’s up?” and a baseline knowledge of anything interesting – sports is preferable, but anything interesting will do.
I settled in quick, talking about everything from intramural to Aggie basketball and football to the Super Bowl to the Utah Jazz from my place on the rough, black carpet.
One guy was studying for the MCAT. Two girls were sitting cross-legged playing cards, while another was in a chair tuning the sports chatter out with white, iPod earbuds.
Around 3:30, the sounds of sportscasters rang off the cement walls, projected from a laptop on the other side of the room. A group had gathered around the small screen to watch video of last year’s Nevada game. The voice of Steve Brown – I can’t be sure, but that’s who it sounded like – reached a fevered pitch when Chaz Spicer was fouled with like three seconds to go and was heading to the line to give USU the win.
It was almost like they were watching it all over again for the first time, cheering, I suppose in preparation for the night’s game.
Perched in my brown, metal folding chair, balancing perfectly on the back two legs, I watched the maybe 9-foot-by-30-foot room fill up with people sitting on the floor and jabbering in excitement. Around 4, we just quit opening the door for the ever-increasing amount of people loitering around outside.
We were building a social strata – us, the bourgeoisie, in our castle and them, the proletariat, outside in the cold. I’m sure I was the only one thinking in such Marxian terms, but I felt free to share it with Joe and Chad, with whom I was discussing the merits of “Arrested Development.”
From the Marxist Theory of Basketball Fanhood, I transitioned to a new theory – foreshadowed for you guys five paragraphs up, if you were paying attention. It was the Romantic Comedy With Zombies Theory of Aggie Fanhood.
For those of you who haven’t seen “Shaun of the Dead,” you are all going to hell, but the theory basically works out like this: We were the protagonists of the story, holed up in a fortress of safety – in this case our little room, not the Winchester pub like in the movie – and the people outside were zombies wanting nothing more than to break down the doors and eat our entrails in a violent manner.
Well, we couldn’t have that.
The crowd outside was gathering quickly. With about 45 minutes until the the mad rush for seats, the bourgeoisie started moving toward the middle, creating a mass of shuffling humanity and anxiety.
About 30 minutes before go time, I decided to put my foot in my mouth.
There was an attractive – hot is an objectifying term, and I’m a gentleman, if nothing else – blond girl, out of my league. So I turned to Joe and another friendly face and started giving this girl a backstory.
“Listen, I’ll never meet this girl in real life because she’s way out of my league, but I’ll tell you how I think she’d be.”
Car type, musical interests, attitudes toward important social issues – I kid – and others. Not a minute after my stereotyping spiel ended, two girls, who were standing next to us the whole time, informed me the blond was one of their roommates.
“Well then, is my face red, then?” I said.
“No. It’s not,” one roommate said. The other was at the glass door making gestures to her blond friend outside about me.
“Was I at least close?”
“Surprisingly, you were.”
I may be a terrible person, but at least I’m a good guess.
The distraction of my shenanigans got us to the 10-and-counting mark. At this point, there was a fair amount of jockeying for position, with those who’d been there the longest making their way to the front.
And then it happened.
At about 5:54, all hell broke loose.
A traitor to the bourgeoisie – an employee of the USU athletic department – opened the doors. A flood of nervous energy flowed, hitting us in the back and sending me into mosh-pit mode.
“Jesus God, the peasants are storming the castle,” I screamed.
In the longest few minutes of my life, I had time to look around the now-packed room and see all the faces of the intruders, including the blond – who, thank God, was too busy fighting for her life to accost about the earlier incident.
And then, it was over. The 6 o’clock hour had hit, and passed. The mad swiping. The manic dashing. All of it was over. I didn’t even get to say goodbye to the people I’d spent six hours with.
The damnedest thing was, I was really on the wrong side the whole time. I had to sprint to the other side of the Spectrum so I could get my customary view from behind the east basket.
It didn’t matter. From my seat, nine rows up from the floor, I had a good view of the most tender moments of the game.
The seat also made me feel like I could be heard, so I yelled biting things, like: “That block was clean, unlike your criminal record, —hole.” “Fox, you’re a fascist.” “Hey ref, you clearly aren’t qualified to officiate basketball games at this level of competition.” “Bull—-.” And the most cutting remark of the evening, “Hey Nevada, it’s become apparent after these 40 minutes that your skill set and team chemistry isn’t up to snuff.”
I bet that one stung.
-da.bake@aggiemail.usu.edu