USC at Washington State – StreakGate

Washington State is one of the two USC road games I dislike the most. The other is the University of Oregon. But I dislike them for totally different reasons.

I don’t like going to Oregon because the experience is miserable. Their fans are the worst and they make visiting most unpleasant. I blogged about this last year here.

On the other hand, the fans at Washington State are pretty innocuous. The worst thing that happened to me was getting some sarcastic thumbs-down from the WSU cheerleaders who were nice enough to pose for a picture.

The problem with going to games at WSU is that the trip is a huge bore. WSU is in Pullman, WA which is in the middle of nowhere.

Getting to Pullman usually means three to four hours of plane travel to get from Los Angeles to Spokane. Then a two hour drive to get from Spokane to Pullman. Because my usual traveling crew abandoned USC this year I expected to go on this trip alone and I was not looking forward to it. Going to remote areas like Pullman makes for a very boring & lonely trip. And once you get to Pullman it’s not like there are tons of USC fans to party with. So few USC fans go to this game that the regional alumni club doesn’t even bother hosting any functions for the game.

Luckily my friend Hilary (@ohilary for those of you on Twitter) decided to join me for the trip to Pullman at the last minute. This was her first USC road game so she was more excited about the trip than I was. Going to Pullman with someone who wasn’t sick of Pullman turned out to be a good thing because it made everything seem less mundane than it actually is.

After landing we had dinner in Spokane and didn’t start the long drive to Pullman until after 10pm. When I entered our hotel’s address into my GPS navigation I was surprised to see a screen that I didn’t even know existed.

I wanted to take the route with unpaved roads but Hilary insisted I don’t try that at night in a sedan. I thought taking dirt roads would have made for a more interesting journey but I agreed to skip the off-roading.

By the time we got to the hotel it was after 1am; we were both tired and ready to get some sleep.

Saturday morning I got up early and went for a run as I usually do the morning before road games then we headed to WSU. I was worried about the weather because it can be cold in Pullman but the weather was really nice. I’ve watched USC games in Pullman in the snow but it was hot & balmy for the game. No complaints!

In the days leading up to the game I saw that USC was favored to win by 24 points. Based on how poorly our defense had been playing and our inability to cover the betting lines I joked that I would streak across the field naked if USC covered the point spread. I made the mistake of saying this on Twitter but I tweet a lot so I didn’t think anyone would remember this one tweet by gameday!

I was very wrong.

USC played poorly enough in the first half that I actually thought we could lose the game. Then in the second half USC turned on the heat and as our lead grew people started sending me all kinds of tweets about streaking naked. I tried to diffuse people’s expectations throughout the game but the tweet bombardment continued. People expected me to not only run across the field but to do it naked.

Crazy people…

So I decided to go along with it. And Hilary was a good accomplice. I sent one last tweet that I was about to streak and then Hilary started sending tweets with details about my capture by WSU security and her ordeal in locating me. I didn’t think anyone would believe this stuff but people must think I’m not just Psycho but a total nut job because everyone seemed to fall for it.

Hilary thought I should just let people believe that I really streaked but I couldn’t let people think that indefinitely. Eventually people would figure out that I didn’t streak and then my credibility would be forever shot. (I was actually shown on TV during the postgame interviews fully clothed. Some people pointed this out on Twitter but few noticed.)

At the end of the night I decided to come clean. So before going to bed I sent a tweet that said “A lot of people asked for a pic of me streaking at WSU. Someone emailed me this pic. Here’s your proof http://twitpic.com/2s4mht.” Twitpic tracks how many times a picture has been viewed. A popular photo for me will be viewed a few hundred times. But this picture was viewed over ELEVEN THOUSAND times. I have no idea how that happened, I don’t have nearly that many people following me on Twitter. Can’t imagine that many people really want to see me naked but I guess the Internet really is full of perverts, even if they’re USC fans. LOL!

Fight On!

Follow me on Twitter! http://twitter.com/uscpsycho