Figuring out the crowd in a football stadium is like counting license plates on a road-trip as a kid. It’s something you do at breaks in the game after the teams are done warming up, before the Star-Spangled Banner and especially during those blessed drive-killing TV timeouts.

Remember the Huskies half empty stadium? I doubt you’ll find an empty stadium in the Big Ten – even at Northwestern. We love football in the Midwest. The Pulitzer photo of 2007 has to be of the one lone Buckeye fan sitting in the student section last weekend at Beaver Stadium — in the hostile Happy Valley.

Ohio State Penn State fans

What was that guy thinking? That’s the Heart of Darkness,

“As I hung a left off Route 26 onto Porter Road in my 1976 Pinto, I could barely make out the stadium through the fog on the windshield… the crowd parted… the parking lot attendant waved me in… I could smell hotdogs in the air… it was as if they were expecting me….”

It takes big brass balls to sit in the middle of the White Out in your scarlet and gray jersey and lucky Buckeye necklace. That’s it, just wade into the paper Pompom waving weenies. “O.H.I.O.,” I say! That’s like swinging in on a rope onto Blackbeard’s ship unarmed and calling him a fat, smelly sissy that wears women’s clothes. Oh, the reason why our band didn’t attend was because last time the PSU fans threw urine bombs on them — TBDBITL…

The Ohio State Alumni or Athletic Department ought to pony up the cash to buy this diehard Buckeye fan (find him for me please) season tickets at away games for the next 25 years that pass onto his children, dead center in “their” home section – just to put a burr up their butts. He could be the next Neutron Man and he doesn’t even know it – or that commuter standing in front of the tank at Tiananmen Square. Yes, it’s that big. OSU could provide him a jersey with an antagonizing names like:

• Illinois: “Ill Annoying”
• Indiana: “Go Hosers”
• Iowa: “Herkey Jerkey”
• Michigan: “U of Hmmm”
• Michigan State: “Go Spurtinz”
• Minnesota: “Land O’ 1000 Aches” or “Golden Goofers”
• Northwestern: “Mildcats”
• Pen State: “Whitewashed Up” or “I.B. Snowblower” or “Nitanny Cryin’”
• Purdue: “Boiler Breaker”
• Wisconsin: “Cheezewiz” or “Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Badges” (too long).

Last but not least, this brings us to our next opponent, the Badgers. When you think of Wisconsin football everybody pictures Gumbas from the Deer Hunter sitting at Lambeau Field (Packer Stadium) shirtless in a blizzard. These are the same boneheads that force farmers to braid Day-Glo into their horses’ manes so the drunks don’t drive-by shoot their stock on the way home from a fruitless sortie of card-playing.

Gus: “Whatcha gonna do, Ollie?
Ollie: Headin’ out to the field to spray paint the cows…
Gus: Yep, sounds like a good idear… Need a hand?
Ollie: You betcha….”

Despite the yahoo factor, the University of Wisconsin is a beautiful college – located on Lake Oshkosh. Although I like to have an association with places I visit, UW’s academic forte eludes me. My geography teacher would be disgusted. At least I got the lake part right. Maybe we’re all brain-washed.

It comes back to the overwhelming power of cheese. America’s Dairyland – yada, yada, yada. The UW campus is the land of blondes Nords and Wilmette (Chicago) Hebrews – the outland of the big city – a remote, safe enclave. It’s like night and day. And, that’s about as far as their heterogeneity goes. In striving to show UW diversity (worse than UWVA or Colorado whom I ragged on earlier this year) the student editor got caught airbrushing if not pasting with Elmer’s glue, an Afro-American student’s head on the university yearbook – dead center. The fact that his noggin was about 20% disproportionate didn’t phase the goof. Right on. Good idear, eh?

Camp Randall stadium looks like a depression-era Roosevelt work project, but it has character. And, oddly at UW they treat their students well, unlike many commercial Division 1 football factories. Maybe because while all the adults are sitting in front of their fires, students attend the games not realizing it’s sub-zero and have icicles hanging off their noses. But, what the hey? At least they don’t have a vacant dome 30 miles off campus. The students are right down on the field in the good seats where they can be heard.

They also have a diabolical if not completely dangerous tradition at UW. No, it’s not like engineers at Texas A&M building a 5-story pyramid for their homecoming bonfire to crush the student body when it collapses. It’s something more simplistic – slightly less asinine than Brown’s fans throwing flashlight batteries or Raiders fans throwing beer bottles or the Nittany Urine Tossers Local #666. Oh, but it’s up there.

The day before the game, UW students takes an average Stay-Puff marshmallow, inserts a couple of quarters matching the flat ends of it, then puts them in the freezer overnight. Sounds harmless until you score a touchdown at the UW student section end-zone and a missile puts your eye out. Ask any Buckeye Football Alumni that’s played the Badgers away, and they’ll tell you so. It’s a real, living urban legend – with welts as proof.

Although juvenile and dangerous, it takes skill to throw these “marsh missiles.” Is there a name for them? C’mon some Badger has to email me and give it up. When frozen the marsh missiles are hard and weighted, they’re not aerodynamic, but are cylindrical. Do you throw them end-over-end like a Tom Dempsey field goal? Do you spiral them like a Ray Guy punt, or throw them side-arm flat top horizontal to the ground like a Ken Tekulve pitch? And, if you insert the quarters wrong, that’ll throw them out of round diminishing accuracy. Perplexing.

It took it upon myself to find out. The answer is none of the three approaches. You throw them over-hand with a backspin with the flat ends perpendicular to the ground and you’ll hit your target every other heave – which was my dog, Chester, so he made clean-up simple – except he has a buck and 25 cents in his gullet. But, nothing can kill him. I’ll have to borrow the neighbor’s metal detector in the Spring to get my money back. Every now and then a blind squirrel finds an acorn. Yes, Chester taught me something other than how to pass a fistful of quarters — that if you get caught throwing Marsh Missiles, you can eat the evidence. I’d hate to be in the UW dorms on Sunday morning.

That’s about where the threat ends with Wisconsin fans. UW fans don’t travel well because they can’t get the cheese hats off their heads to get into their cars or airplanes. Try to explain that the FTA as you pass through the X-ray machine at Dane County Regional Airport.

Dwight the TSA Guy: “Hey, Ollie… you got that shoe horn thing we use to get the cheese off their heads?

Dwayne the TSA Guy: “No, I must have misplaced it… You’re gonna have to send ‘em away again…”

Bet you’d cry like a baby if they confiscated your cheese hat. Then what would you have to do – comb your greasy hair on that wedge-shaped head of yours? Okay, that was childish. I recant for a moment. Here’s another original.

Q1: Why do Wisconsin fans wear cheese hats?
A1: So after visiting the bathroom they can find each other – beats the ball of yarn they used to carry on them to make their way back to their seats…

I never said it was a good joke. Thank God Badger fans live so far away from us – because they are the worst drivers in America — worse than a cabby or New Jersey driver. They’re easy to spot in a rusted out 1980-period American car belching blue smoke, swerving line-to-line at 45 mph in the fast lane with yellow WISCONSIN license plates. They’re not from Fargo, but darned close.

Enough of the fans. If a Badger fan is at the Horseshoe, their red and white will conveniently blend in at the horseshoe and they won’t say much or have much to cheer about even of they can figure out the Planes, Trains and Automobiles… OSU should methodically pick them (#4 Passing Defense, and a lowly #8 Run Defense) apart. Like Penn State, they’re not only Neanderthal on offense (#5 Passing and a respectable #3 Rushing Offense) but they won’t be able to catch up as Secretariat runs for the finish.

Score: Buckeyes 38, Wisconsin 14