I didn't think that a black-out was possible.
I was in attendance for Ohio Stadium's attempt at doing a 4G inverted dive with Penn State's patented white-out in late 2015, and while I did dutifully wear a shabby black Buckeye hoodie that I keep around for special events like "hiding my gross flabby torso at the gym" and "hiding my gross flabby torso while walking the dog", I wasn't particularly optimistic about Ohio State fans pulling it off.
Which made me sad! A well-executed fan stunt is just one of those things that activates a very specific cluster of neurons in my brain and makes me fall in love with college sports all over again, but I didn't think that I'd bear witness to that in Ohio Stadium. My personal belief at the time was that Buckeye fans are just too numerous, chaotic, and unruly to organize something as intricate and complicated as "everyone wear the same extremely common color."
Luckily I was wrong. It worked, and it was kickass.
It's been seven years since then, and in the interim Ohio State has rarely asked its fans to contribute much more in the way of coordination than showing up at a prescribed date and location and to be loud. That lack of faith in a bunch of semi-lucid Buckeye fans motivated by a combination of alcohol and spite is disappointing to me. Both spite and alcohol are quality instigators of determined action, and this is not being exploited in Columbus anywhere close to the limits of human achievement.
To wit, the Ohio State athletic department has been putting out its themes for the football games this season, which include "wear black", "wear scarlet", and "don't roll your eyes at the Homecoming court".
Weak! Feeble! Flaccid! November's themes are still on their way, but Ohio State and Ohio State fans can do much better than what we've seen thus far. So, instead, here are my suggestions, a game-by-game endorsement of the creativity of the Buckeye football fan and the richness of Ohio State culture:
NOTRE DAME
Currently this is the game slated for the 2002 National Championship Team Reunion Celebration, which... okay, fine. They won a natty and that's cool, but I think that one way to make that celebration significantly more entertaining would be for, while the 2002 team is standing at midfield and waving placidly for 30 seconds, a .wav of shattering glass plays on the Ohio Stadium jumbotron as the undefeated 2012 squad streams down the entrance ramp and has a Ladder Match with the 2002 team with John Cooper as the referee.
ARKANSAS STATE
Arkansas State had six head football coaches between 2011 and 2013, so the obvious move here is to invite all of them to the game to psychologically torment the Red Wolves. This alone doesn't require much fan involvement, so the second edict here is for enterprising Buckeye fans to goad Hugh Freeze into as many Liberty University honor code violations as possible while he's on campus. This should not be difficult.
TOLEDO
Kind of a Midwestern-potluck-meets-The-Martian idea, Ohio State will contact individual seat holders and ask them to bring in one component of a Saturn V rocket, and collectively the fans in attendance will construct and launch said rocket as part of the halftime show.
WISCONSIN
This one is easy; simply do everything that Wisconsin normally does (Jump Around, Build Me Up Buttercup, etc.), just one quarter earlier to really annoy the hell out of them. Ideally the Ohio State Marching Band should be seated right next to Wisconsin's, and only play their instruments when the Wisconsin band starts to play themselves.
RUTGERS
Rutgers coincides with the Homecoming game, which means that we can safely ignore everything associated with that and instead host an off brand version of Medieval Times. Fans should be encouraged to wear crushed velvet and consume nothing but mead and roasted turkey legs. The Buckeyes will wear an alternate uniform comprising of 85 pounds of plate mail armor and a claymore.
IOWA
Iowa's wave to the Children's Hospital is pretty fantastic and heart-warming, but I refuse to let the Buckeyes be second in anything, including wholesome community outreach. Therefore the Iowa game will be played inside the halls and waiting rooms of Nationwide Children's Hospital in downtown Columbus, with Buckeye fans showering patients and hospital staff with gifts and flowers and profuse apologies every time something important gets knocked over or stepped on.
INDIANA
The game will be played in Ohio Stadium, but Buckeye fans will all show up unannounced in Bloomington, set Memorial Stadium's attendance record, and then head back to Ohio Stadium before the start of the 4th quarter. This requires that a four hour drive be done in about three, but that shouldn't be too much of an issue as long as everyone carpools with Dave.
MICHIGAN
Look, we all know that the atmosphere at The Game this year is going to be somewhere between "Beyond Thunderdome" and "Fury Road", so as long as Gene Smith arranges for a Doof Warrior to shred various fight riffs on an electric guitar while suspended over the field, I think we're good.
These are just ideas. Excellent, fantastic ideas, but really the goal with this article is to plead with Ohio State to have a little more faith than I did on that night in October several years ago. Buckeye fans are collectively a group of mangy, feral cats, but they can be eventually herded if given the proper incentive. I know that the powers-that-be can come up with something that pops in the stadium and on television.
Just please don't ask me to care about Homecoming.
