By Chad Conine

Tribune-Herald staff writer

Randy Hair saw the melee coming even as he almost became part of it.

In November 2001, the Texas Tech freshman was present as the seeds were sown for an infamous afternoon of fisticuffs between Red Raider fans and the visiting Texas A&M Aggies at Jones SBC Stadium in Lubbock.

As fans and students filled the stadium, Hair remembers hearing rumblings of a plan to celebrate an anticipated upset of 24th-ranked A&M. The Aggies had become a bitter rival as the Red Raiders’ football fortunes improved, and four wins in the last six meetings had convinced many Tech fans that they were ready to supplant A&M as the Texas Longhorns’ primary challenger in the state.

'American Hooligan'

Tribune-Herald staff writer Chad Conine is touring the Big 12 South and beyond this fall to take a closer look at the battle between passion and sportsmanship, and to try and answer this question: Are college football fans becoming the American version of English soccer hooligans?

Read the series

• 11-07-08  THE AMERICAN HOOLIGAN, Part 4: LSU football frenzy tale of night and day 
• 10-17-08  THE AMERICAN HOOLIGAN, Part 3: Texas, Oklahoma fans full of hate -- until the whistle blows 
• 09-26-08  THE AMERICAN HOOLIGAN, Part 2: Texas Tech tries to keep fans from crossing the line 
• 09-06-08  THE AMERICAN HOOLIGAN, Part 1: Big 12 officials seek to keep rivalries intense while stamping out fan violence 
• 09-06-08  Chad Conine: Sportswriter's driving mission: Seeking out the American Hooligan 

Hair, a Tech graduate who now works for a Fort Worth-based landscape architecture firm, remembers the word being passed: “If we win this thing, that goal post is coming down.”

By definition, college football teams attract followers — especially students and alumni — who feel directly connected to each win or loss. So it’s no surprise when those fans inject themselves into the action.

A quick surf of YouTube turns up plenty of examples of fans gone wild — from Florida students’ drunken celebration of their football national title in early 2007 to a burning couch on South 10th Street near the Baylor campus after the Bears’ five-overtime basketball win over A&M earlier this year.

College sports fans annually exhibit as much passion for their games as any group of fans in the world for any sport. That energy and enthusiasm can develop into violence more quickly than a thunderstorm.

And so it did in 2001 when the Red Raiders gave their red-and-black-clad masses exactly what they wanted — a shutout victory over the Aggies — and sent the Tech faithful pouring onto the field at Jones SBC Stadium.

A small contingent of athletic department officials guarded the doomed goal post, but the fans had no trouble bringing it down.

Hair said he and a couple of friends made a break for the field.

“I can remember weaving in and out of people, so not everybody was going down,” he said. “We were just flying down there because we knew about it. We jumped the rail because we couldn’t wait to take the steps. By the time we got there, the goal post was almost down.”

Hair quickly joined a crowd of fans who carried the goal post like a trophy from one end zone to the other. He even hopped up and took a brief ride atop the bright-yellow pole.

Hair said he doesn’t remember hearing the rest of the plan, if there was one, but somehow the goal post was carried off the field and into a section where many Texas A&M fans were still gathered.

“As soon as it made it to the A&M section and started going up in there, I can remember jumping up on the rail and seeing brawls going on,” Hair said. “This guy confronted me at the rail and pushed me off the rail. There was so much energy from us winning the game and them losing the game.”

After seeing the black eyes and bad press that resulted from the postgame brawl, Hair felt grateful the Aggie fan didn’t let him climb into the stands — and the fight.

Students rush the field on a weekly basis around the college football landscape. Baylor fans have taken down the uprights several times in recent years, following wins over Texas in 1997, Kansas in 2002 and Texas A&M in 2004.

When Bears fans last claimed a trophy, after a 35-34 overtime victory over the Aggies in 2004, then-coach Guy Morriss said he hoped Baylor fans would come to expect those type of wins so the school could stop buying new goal posts.

But Texas Tech’s supposed goal-post joust stood out for the violence that erupted between Red Raider and Aggie fans.

It wasn’t the first or last time that fans’ enthusiasm boiled over, but it might be one of the most well-documented cases, particularly in the history of the Big 12.

Almost seven years later, many universities and conferences — including Texas Tech, Texas and the Big 12 — have launched campaigns encouraging fans to be considerate, even as they go berserk for their teams.

The presence of television commercials, like the Big 12’s “Be a good sport” ads, called attention last season to the fervor of fans while encouraging sportsmanship.

For example, viewers of one ad, it’s assumed, feel sympathy for a gentleman with a white mustache innocently and peacefully working in his yard when some obnoxious ruffians cruise past.

“Hey, happy socks, call that a hedge?” an unseen hooligan shouts.

The Big 12’s message: “You don’t do it anywhere else, so why do it at the game? Be a good sport.”

But recently some fans have apparently carried their passion far from the context of Big 12 events.

Last summer, Oklahoma fan Allen Michael Beckett and Brian Thomas, a Texas backer, engaged in an altercation at an Oklahoma City pub.

The fight started with trash talking because Thomas was wearing a Texas T-shirt. It ended with Thomas suffering a torn scrotal sack and exposed testicles.

Beckett, through his attorney, claimed he acted only in self defense. He’s due to go to trial in December.

“I think it’s an indication of the passion that people feel and how closely people identify with the schools they support,” Big 12 Assistant Commissioner Bob Burda said.

Although Beckett’s attorney Billy Bock downplayed the Red River Rivalry tie-in, by all accounts the altercation began over sports trash talking.

Bar fights might be beyond school and conference officials’ control, but Texas director of women’s athletics Chris Plonsky says those bodies are actively trying to influence their fan bases in their arenas.

“People get a little too spunky at athletic events,” Plonsky said. “We have to send a message. There’s a way to act. You’ve got to be able to control your actions.”

Around Texas’ newly expanded Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, fans can see signs at once stating and imploring: “Texas Fans Make Us Proud.”

Plonsky says Texas’ sportsmanship campaign sprouted from the Longhorns’ trip to Ohio State for a nonconference football game in 2005.

“That was a great night for college football, to be there at one of their few night games with that horseshoe full,” Plonsky said of the Horns’ 25-22 victory over the Buckeyes.

However, with all those fans gathered together for a game that helped shape the national championship picture, some Texas fans found themselves in areas outside the stadium, surrounded by Ohio State fans who became “ripe with their mouths and their actions,” Plonsky said.

“Our fans came back here and said, ‘God forbid Ohio State fans come here and see anything like that,’ ” Plonsky said.

Since then, Plonsky has helped guide “Texas Fans Make Us Proud,” and she’s been pleased with the cooperation from the Texas Exes organization as well as the fans at Memorial Stadium. And Texas remains one of the most difficult places in the country for the visiting team to win.

Meanwhile, Texas Tech’s home field advantage and its reputation as a raucous environment continue to gain momentum, to the apparent delight of quirky head coach Mike Leach.

The second page of the Red Raiders’ 2008 media guide features Red Raider fans dressed as pirates, one of Leach’s many areas of nonfootball interest.

Burda says that kind of passion and creativity among fans isn’t necessarily bad.

“I think that’s part of the challenge of administrators, to find that balance,” Burda said. “You want to have a home-field advantage that may include a hostile, intimidating environment. How can we have that type of environment and foster proper fan behavior? That’s the million-dollar question.”

By seeking an answer, and prompting fans to think about their own actions, the Big 12 and its schools have engaged in the battle against hooliganism.

The term hooligan has been reserved for soccer fans, particularly in the United Kingdom. But it’s becoming a fitting description for some on the college sports landscape.

“If you look at European soccer and some of the incidents that occur, you go, ‘That’s crazed behavior,’ ” Plonsky said. “But there, but for the grace of God, go all of us.”

cconine@wacotrib.com

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