The Best Fans on the Best Forum

I'm a new poster here but a long time Big Red fan (obviously Hockey and Lax.) I just wanted to thank you guys on this Forum for all the Big Red sports updates, the news updates, and above all the civilized manner in which people conduct themselves.
My appreciation for this Forum has grown by leaps and bounds after spending a fair bit of time this season on the USCHO Forum, which appears to be deteriorating into a mess (hopefully it will get better at the start of next season when real hockey fans return.) However, if you want to see the worst fans in the world, visit the Syracuse Lax discussion board. The Cornell/SU game was preceded by an incredible amount of the most obnoxious overconfidence and lack of respect. The SU loss quickly turned all of that into cries for Coach Desko's head followed by incredible heapings of abuse on the goalie and on the SU team in general. Man, I love it when phonies get exposed.
Anyway, just wanted to say thanks to some real fans and here's to more fun next season.

Amen re the SU forum. They now take the crown as worst losers--and winners, for that matter.

A sample post from the Orange Lax Forum...

From: SU SUX

CU scores about 8 goals on the door step on off ball cuts. SU NEVER figures it out. Bickel did not win ONE face off in the second half when it mattered. Cuse is a JOKE and are far from an elite team because they are way too inconsistent. I hope they were not too tired patting themslves on the back after the Loyola win. This team has NO shot at a title because they are too immature to take care of their responsibilities. Nice job BOYS. And I do mean BOYS. I thought our name was Orangmen not Orangeboys.

Truly a classy bunch...

They seem to sound very familiar....oh yeah, that's a bit like whiny high schoolers.

I hear an awful lot about your fans... emphasis on the awful... but I suppose I'll get to see first-hand when BU plows through Ithaca next Thanksgiving. Nice series split earlier this year... you beat our good goalie but lost to our Round Mound of Rebound. Kinda kicking around now that the season is over, but I love talking it up, so maybe I'll be spending some more time around here... GO BU.

Their coach knows how to lose with class. This from the CornellBigRed article:

"Hats off to Cornell," Syracuse head coach John Desko said. "They have a strong defense, and they put 15 goals on the board against us, which we didn't expect. I thought they were well-prepared for this game. They deserved to win this game."

You mean...you weren't at the games in Boston? What kind of a BU fan are you?

Screw BU!!!

Brian-

I think the only people who would label the Lynah Faithful as "awful" are ones with way too thin skins. Like the elderly (?) Yale alum we discussed once. If you can take teasing with a sense of humor and maybe even *try* to defend yourself, then you should be very impressed with the Lynah crowd.

IMNSHO

-Fred, DeltaOne81 '03

I'm pretty sure that was his name. Anyway, he's an occasional contributor to this forum and although his agenda is obviously different from ours, I think we treat one another with mutual respect. (We try to make a distinction between yelling at another team and their fans during the game--which is all in good fun--and treating them like college hockey comrades when we encounter them outside of the rink.)

I've been to Walter Brown three times, for the last three Cornell-BU games, and was pretty impressed with the atmosphere, and with the enthusiasm of the BU fans and band. I hope you come away from Lynah saying the same thing. I'm thrilled that we've started playing BU again, rekindling the historical rivalry which we've tried to keep alive by immortalizing you in one of our cheers. I don't know about the Terrier side of things, but a lot of us were hoping for Cornell and BU to prevail on the second day of the regionals to set up a deciding game for the season series in the national semifinal.

All that said, SCREW BU!!

That's me, John. Ditto on the resumption of the BU-Cornell series...let's hope it lasts beyond 2002-03. Here's hoping the Terriers bring their "A" game to Lynah next season. Hey, I'll take a split, even with some of the Faithful absent due to Thanksgiving break. I'm a little more cautiously optimistic than Brian above. More years following BU and more disappointments, I guess.

I'm sure the Big Red are going to make a big push for Buffalo next April, and if things break right for BU, perhaps they'll join them there.

And, all that said, "Talafous shoots, he scooooores!" Although that's more for Jim and Al.

Oh, I was at the second game, but couldn't make the first. Only figures that I caught the loss. I wish the visiting Red fans could've seen Walter Brown in full force, but I suppose that's the problem with mid-break matchups. I hear Cornell fans are the most vulgar in college hockey (congrats, I suppose,) but I'll have to see that first-hand. What's with bringing your band down? That was kind of strange. Hopefully we'll get to "return the favor" and play over some of your band's songs. I, too, would've loved a BU-Cornell regional matchup, especially with a die-hard Red fan as a good friend up there. Here's hoping my foot doesn't end up in my mouth next year, but I think BU should pull off a split or better. If we can handle UNH's Whittemore Center and Maine's Alfond Arena, we can do Lynah.

People may say we're "most vulgar", but that's pretty clearly not true, as a trip to e.g., Yost will likely demonstrate. (Nor do we regularly use language as off-color as "fuck 'em up, fuck 'em up, BC sucks", at least now that we're ostensibly saying "rough 'em up" in Gary Glitter.) Our standard cheers would probably not even garner more than a TV-PG(L), unless you're from a generation that considers "sucks" and "screw" extremely naughty words. For the past few years, a large segment of the crowd has unfortunately decided that one cheer should end in "asshole" (which used to be used only on the rare occasions where it was really deserved), and the athletic department has equally unfortunately decided that the way to handle this is to have the ushers stalk up and down the aisles looking to eject anyone who says "asshole".

But I think more than my description of the Lynah Faithful, you may be interested in a few testimonials from fans of other teams:
[lists.maine.edu]
[lists.maine.edu]
[lists.maine.edu]
Note that Sara clearly isn't fond of Cornell's cheering style, she still has good things to say about us as individuals.

The band at the BU game was mostly alums, but the Big Red Pep Band makes several regular-season road trips a year, and tries not to miss big road games like Harvard (aka Lynah East). So it was fitting that they turned out for the big BU weekend.

Not many visiting bands make it to Lynah; usually it's just Clarkson (who travel to practically every game; kudos to Tech) and Colgate (who have the shortest trip to Ithaca and consider us a big rival). This year the Yale band came to Lynah for the ECAC playoffs (actually, the Eli split their squad between us and the Ivy basketball playoff games; Harvard take note), and the Battle of the Bands added to the atmosphere. Cornell home crowds have on occasion behaved inappropriately towards visiting bands, probably out of lack of practice dealing with them.

Boston, on the other hand, is a lot less accessible than Ithaca, so I would have thought Walter Brown would see a lot of visiting bands. Why the surprise at ours?

Since it's from a Cornell fan, but a followup to the HOCKEY-L discussion linked above:

[lists.maine.edu]

Unfortunately, the intelligent discussion on that thread was ended by a reply from one of HOCKEY-L's few idiot posters. Fortunately the ratio of content and esprit de corps to flaming and vitriol is much higher on H-L than the USCHO board, which is one reason I read the former more frequently than the latter.

Yours is the only visiting band I've seen come to Walter Brown in the past two years... can't speak for years preceeding that though. Maybe the Hockey East just doesn't do the traveling-band thing.

Cheap bahsteds.

Cheap? Must be reall cheap 'cuz it's soooooo expensive to make the trip from BC to BU down Commonwealth or from Northeastern...

When I lived in Boston, I used to go to games among the local three HE teams (e.g., BC and BU, BU at Northeastern, etc...). The visiting crowds were always tiny and quiet, even when there were massive numbers of empty seats (as there usually were, especially at BC). Boston is a great college hockey town, but it doesn't produce great (nor even particularly good) college hockey crowds. I also caught a few D3 games (played at Walter Brown -- maybe the schools didn't have their own rinks), and those crowds had at most a couple dozen fans.

T costs a buck now.