The Back Alley Archives

Florida Gulf Coast students exist. They are well-groomed people between the ages of 18 and 25 with good orthodontics and gym-toned asses, mostly commuter students from the Ft. Myers/Naples area. The groups of young men communicate exclusively in fist bumps and dated cultural references. Next to me, a group of guys say nothing but "Ba-ba-BOUIEEE!" in reaction to anything for the better part of an hour. The girls make high-pitched noises and run wedge formations through crowds to bumrush the bathroom.

As a group, they seem to have a hard time deciding on precisely how to start existing as a group. They come to an agreement that they can collectively chant the initials of the school, and agree that "Fuck Florida!" is a compelling rallying cry. Besides that, there is no real coordination besides batting an inflatable gator around and cheering loudly whenever FGCU, rolling in the first ten minutes of the game, dunks home a lob or hits an improbable moonball three-pointer.

At every location where more than 10 people have congregated to watch a sporting event, there is a man wearing an Ohio State fitted cap. This fitted is worn backwards. This Ohio State fan will be loud. He did not attend Ohio State. He will triangulate his interest in the sporting event based on its relation to Ohio State's interests as determined by him and him alone. These interests will make no sense whatsoever, and will be defended loudly.


As Florida clamps down and begins bogging down Dunk City with defense, the representative Ohio State random commences melting down. He screams "Fuck the Gators" long after the crowd settles into drunken detachment, throwing up his arms theatrically at every missed shot and turnover. "YOU SUCK!" accompanies every Florida free throw. He stands up, sits down, and fiddles with the arrangement of flatbreads and nachos nervously.


When the end is near, he molts his Dunk City shirt and simply sits, semi-despondent in a black sleeveless t-shirt, waiting for the next warm breeze to carry him to another sporting even he could use to root against some hated enemy of the state he had not yet met.

Like everything else in Florida, Florida Gulf Coast fandom didn't exist until it suddenly did, and then the rest had to be invented on the fly, and in a hurry. There was nothing, and then something, and in between something and a proper thing, they would have it at the mini-mall, and perhaps make t-shirts for the moment.