Ohio Stadium, home of the Ohio State Buckeyes, will be a hotbed of activity on Saturday night when the fifth ranked Buckeyes welcome the Virginia Tech Hokies to town. In anticipation of this, Ohio State has announced a new program for this season where fans can text security from their smartphones to alert them of problematic fans.
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The university added room for 2,600 more screaming fans in the offseason, leading to the creation of this program. According to WBNS-TV in Columbus, fans can text BRUTUS to 69050 and a member of stadium staff or security will see that their issue is resolved.
While this is intended to target fans who are inebriated or swearing, they also mentioned fans who do not sit during game play.
This strikes me as a bit odd. Granted, I have only been to four college and two professional football stadiums, but I did not see a whole lot of sitting going on. Mostly just during halftime, and occasionally when the home team was on offense. Even during television timeouts, the fans at Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium were standing.
Granted, I attended a game against Miami, who fans still hate for breaking Troy Aikman’s leg and having him transfer to UCLA. I also attended the last Nebraska-Oklahoma conference game there, and the 2008 Texas Tech game when the Red Raiders came in ranked second in the country. It could just be due to those high-profile games.
Still, is the game against the Hokies not high profile? It seems to me that you would want your fans on their feet, all 102,000 plus, screaming at the top of their lungs.
I guess to me, this just opens up a can of worms. If fans can text security about fans standing, even when most others in the stadium are doing the same, what are they supposed to do?
We will find out, for better or worse, on Saturday night.