Not entirely OT: your worst away game experience

Double post. 

Surprisingly Purdue. Bunch of assholes. 

I go to all of Michigan's games at osu and have for many years. Their fan behavior at games has been mostly disappointing to me for the majority of the 21st century. I honestly have not been treated badly really in any way for the vast majority of the last 20 years. And that IS the problem. In the 90s I was threatened, yelled at in the streets before and after, yelled at in the stands, and hit with popcorn on a few occasions. I miss the intensity.....I miss the fear and anxiety that fueled osu fans' childish behavior. It was a never ending reinforcement of why I am a Michigan fan while living in central ohio. Treatment now is more like benign neglect.....here is to this year bringing back a little anxiety

Fair disclosure my seats have been in faculty and alumni areas of the stadium since the mid 90s---far away from students.

2005 at Northwestern. I was so excited to take my wife to her first M game. The plan was to drive from Washington, DC to Detroit Friday afternoon, then leave for Chicago with my parents Saturday morning. As we got to the Ohio Turnpike (5 hours into the drive), I realized that I forgot the tickets in DC. We turned around, got the tickets, then drove straight to Chicago and met my parents there. We got to the stadium right after kickoff.

Michigan won. We had subs. It was crazy.

Easy. Columbus, The Ohio in 2016. A friend had family tix just behind the Michigan bench, 10 rows up, so the whole game was a flood of "fuck you" and "asshole" cascading over my head. Including the otherwise sweet little old lady who kept hitting me in her screamed swearing. When I finally said something, sweet little old lady said, "Oh, I'm sorry, sir," and then more screaming, though without the hitting.

Said it before and I'll say it again: the refs were afraid to acknowledge Michigan had stopped osu's qb. Not consciously but the noise and energy would have tugged any normal person—assuming refs are normal—to lean against Michigan.

That crowd was scary. I've been in lots of crowds—and a few dangerous situations—but that was more than home-field advantage, it was a threat.

Went to Ohio State twice in the early 80's. First trip wore Michigan gear, got spit on and beer thrown on me, tried standing and cheering and thought I was gonna be attacked. 2nd trip wore plain clothes and kept my mouth shut and sat the whole time and was OK. Never again.

I've been to 11 of 14 Big Ten stadiums and the worst experience I had was @MSU in 2011. I did sit in the student section with a friend who was at MSU at the time, so I expected an inordinate amount of insults, slurs, etc. but I had two distinct events happen to me which made it the worst:

I was walking down the stairs when someone shoved me in the back in an effort to push me down the stairs. I luckily didn't fall too far and was able to catch myself before things were bad. I spoke to the officer outside and she said "Well, you're wearing the wrong colors." Yes, I expect verbal abuse, but not to be assaulted. I let the usher know what happened and when I walked back up to my seat the guy (possibly another one, idk) put his hand on my shoulder and the usher immediately came up and threw that entire group of MSU students out.

After the game (a 28-14 MSU victory, unfortunately) I was walking back to my car and a woman who appeared to be in her 50s put her thumbs down at me, which was fine, but then spat on me. I just kept moving and didn't say anything because I was in such disbelief.

I've not had a bad experience at OSU, but then again I wasn't really a Michigan fan until the mid-2000s, and it's easy to keep your mouth shut and let a 17-3 record over the last 20 years do the trash talking I suppose.

Games that I was present at that were poor for reasons other than fan behavior:

• 0-31 loss @ Notre Dame in 2014
• 6-29 loss @ MSU in 2013 (complete with -48 rushing yards)
• M00N game in 2014
• @Wisconsin in 2017 (but that's only primarily because I was drunk and left my winter coat in a bar and it was November 18th)

App. State - Enough said

Indiana 2017. It was a pretty warm day out and they ran out of water before halftime. This game also went into overtime. I don't know if it was because of the water situation but that game seemed to take forever. I swear it was over 4.5 hours with only 1 overtime.

went to columbus once, it was horrible

My only away game was October 13, 1973.  I traveled to East Lansing to watch Michigan dismantle Sparty 31 - 0.  The worst thing was the rain.  As I recall, it was in the 50s with a torrential downpour.  My brother, a Sparty invited me up my Freshman year at UM.  We were absolutely soaked and frozen by the end of the game.

The Sparty Bob game (2001?). The 1999 game was brutal too. 

2013 at Iowa - the wind chill was -10 at kickoff and UM had 94 total yards losing by 3.

2014 at NW (M00N) - My wife got pneumonia a day later.
 

I was at a Michigan vs Northwestern MBB game and the NW cheerleaders were wearing halter top sweaters.  One incredibly well endowed NW Cheerleader kept losing her right side about every third jump for a jump or two.

My wife was watching me watch the cheerleaders and finally told me we came to watch to watch the game. 

I've actually enjoyed every road game I've been too, even when the fans (or game) sucked.  It's always fun to get to experience a new stadium.

86 Rose Bowl.

I had seats in the endzone that were literally at the dividing line between PAC 10 and Big 10 seats so to the left of me were ALL ASU fans.  Who ALL had poms poms and loved to waive them in my face all game.  Also fun was that my seats were directly aligned with the cross bar of the goal posts so my line of sight unless i perched up or scrunched down was obscured.  Compounding matters I massively hungover (stayed with a friend in LA who had a party that went until dawn) and my headache didnt really go away until late in the game.

And despite jumping out to an early 15-3 lead we lost 23-15 as Bo massively turtled and called something like 43 straight sprint draws to Jamie Morris.  Which stopped working about midway through the 2nd quarter if memory serves.

And anyone who went to Rose Bowls in the 70's & 80's know that most of the parking was in the unlit golf course next to the stadium.  Which is fine when you're going in (you see the stadium and aim for it) but not so fine leaving as trying to find a rental car that looks like every other rental car (what color was that thing again?) in a dark golf course was next to impossible.  Last memory of that game was wandering around the course looking for our car (this was in the days before remote start so you couldnt chirp the car and follow the sound) for at least 90 minutes after the game - hungover, tired, pissed off we lost, pissed off Bo kept running the ball and then REALLY super-duper pissed off when an ASU fan started shaking a pom-pom in my face.  

I've never wanted to hit another man more than i have that guy at that moment in time.  But I didnt.

Losing to Northwestern 16-17 at Dyche Stadium in 1996. We were 4-0 going into the game and just couldn’t get anything going against a team we were vastly superior to in terms of talent. It was the second straight loss to NU and the train ride back into the city from Evanston was just full of bewilderment and frustration. Of course the next season was a national championship. 

2016 Iowa....tailgate was amazing but the second we entered into the stadium it was jam-packed....it seemed everyone arrived at the same time and it was like sardines inside the lobby. It was getting very claustrophobic that it was getting hard to breathe. Everyone was so packed together my sister's feet weren't even touching the ground and was being moved by the crowd. Finally made it into the actual stands late for kickoff and we'll you know how the rest of the game went

Illinois

Worst experience had nothing to do with the fans, just horrible weather.  Went to the UM @ ND game in 2008.  Torrential downpour for most of the day and game.  UM had something like 7 fumbles and lost 5 of them. 

The fans always were pleasant whenever I made my way to South Bend, but the rain and subsequent soggy shoes, socks, and shorts (even under the poncho) made for a cold unfun day on top of Rich Rod embarrassing himself that day.

This is actually a good memory but kind of fits as it relates to very poor behavior by an opposing fan.

We were tailgating at MSU at the tennis courts before the 2007 game.  My friend is chatting up some MSU girl and they get into a conversation about which school is better.  Things started off kind of flirty but it didn't take long for the girl to get extremely upset because my friend disputed her claim that she easily could've gotten into Michigan but chose not to apply because whatever program she was in at State was supposedly #1 in the world.  Anyway, my friend kept pushing this girl's buttons and out of nowhere she just turns and takes a closed-fisted swing right at his face.  My friend dodged it at the last second and the girl literally just ran away out of embarrassment.

I was in the stadium for the game which turned out to be a classic.  Came back from a 24-14 deficit in the 4th quarter to win 28-24 on a beautiful TD pass to Greg Matthews and then a great TD catch by Manningham.  Hell of a game.