Maybe I’m Nuts but…I just don’t know what to think about the state of fans (mostly football fans) at sporting events sometimes. Oh, I understand getting behind your team but, really, sometimes I just scratch my head in shear wonderment.

   The Packers are really to blame for the whole headgear thing. Cheese heads. They’re all adorning themselves with a wedge of cheese. Okay…but…doesn’t ANYBODY in Greenbay like Gouda? What exactly IS that cheese they wear? It looks like Cheddar but it has holes like Swiss. SURELY there must be 1 nacho fan there SOMEWHERE. Of course (while you never see it on TV) I do understand those in the pricey skybox suites ARE capping themselves with Brie.
    This spectacle no doubt led to Nebraska fans to concoct over-sized foam rubber ears of corn (Thankfully, the Huskers changed their name to Cornhuskers from Bug Eaters back in the late 1800’s) as THEIR fashion statement on game days.  At least they wear them horizontally.  

   It’s a darn good thing the Falcons haven’t adopted this practice. It would resemble a stadium full of nesting fowl (except for the bald-pated among them looking as though a bird of prey had just laid an egg) or the Boston Red Socks. 

   Many teams DO sport foamy headgear but what’s going on with those football fans who…SHAVE THEIR HEADS and PAINT THEM TO LOOK LIKE A HELMET? I’ve got news for ya there Sparky…it’s not looking near as much like a helmet as it does like ya started the tailgate party WAY too early.

   Now, that leads me to those guys (who again are partaking of the tailgate breakfast beer buffet) that paint their chests with the school letters, take off their shirts and make their mothers proud. A) This can lead to unexpected consequences and…B) I would probably not see much wrong with it if only female fans did it. As to part A…What happens at a Florida State University game when the guy in the middle gets up to go for a wiener and the camera just HAPPENS to pan the crowd? It’s just plain rude…unless…(see part B.)

   Fans of other sports don’t seem as outlandishly festooned. While NASCAS fans DO look like a Lets Make a Deal studio audience…they dress like that EVERY day and thus don’t qualify. Ice skating doesn’t even HAVE fans…they have an audience.

   You don’t see much odd fan behavior in Baseball either unless you take into account those signs with a giant letter K that pop up along the third base line every time the star pitcher records a strike out. The third strike out, by the way, is historically, the reason the state of Mississippi has never had a major league team.

  Fans of sports like golf, bowling and cross country skiing ALWAYS (at least in MY mind) exhibit some of the oddest, strangest and downright WEIRD behavior imaginable. Oh…don’t get me wrong…it has NOTHING to do with how they dress or anything they do or say while they’re there…it’s the fact that they’re there AT ALL which I find completely perplexing.

   Soccer fans and their behavior is always…shall we say…colorful. I’d probably be on the edge of starting a riot too if I paid good money to get in and half my annual salary for a libation to watch a game that lasts for HOURS where, between the two teams, 1 point was scored. They get a pass.

  Cricket produces some amount of curiousness but mostly from the players of whatever cricket is. Have you seen these beings? They wear a batting helmet…with a faceguard, polo shirts, sneakers and bomb disposal unit leg protection while swinging a frat house paddle at a croquette ball. Forget the players and fans…WHO CAME UP with this “sport” anyway???

   And one more thing. What sort of sick, twisted combination of audible and sign language is the whole cardboard picket fence thing we are commonly subjected to at football games? Somebody with substantial hearing loss derived from being in front of vuvuzela boy at the last World Cup? (Who, by the way, must now attend all sporting events standing up thanks to me) All HE gets out of it is 3 picket fences. If THAT’S not bad enough, you have those guys in black and white striped shirts whose optical distress is glaringly obvious (though they DO manage to negotiate their way up and down the field sans use of German Sheppard) and all THEY get is…D…D…D…

   Or…Maybe I’m nuts.

I’m Craig Andresen