What It Means to Be a FanFall 2025

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I set out to find and interview Oregon State superfans. We write a lot about the players — their feats, their fumbles and, as college sports changes, the new choices they face. But if you expand your view or, better yet, turn the camera around, you see that every game, every competition, is made up of not only those on the playing field, but also those in the stands.

Year in and year out, each new generation of student-athletes looks up to see Reser alive with black and orange, feels the Gill floorboards (and their eardrums) vibrate with the roar of the crowd. The players’ faces and names change, but the spirit, that fervor, that community, remains. We learned something about how important that is during the pandemic — it’s just not the same to play to empty seats, or even to a sea of cardboard cutouts.

I wondered what I could learn from talking with some of the die-hardest of die-hard Beavers. Those who dedicate their time and, in some cases, considerable creativity to the OSU community. (See our cover story, “Super Fans!” on page 38.) When I asked them why they do what they do — whether it’s spending hours every day keeping a popular Facebook forum kind, baking cookies for the baseball and gymnastics teams or wearing Beaver gear 9,000 days in a row — a theme quickly became clear. Almost every answer came down to two things: the people and the fun.

They talked about spouses met and best friends made, the pleasure of reconnecting with old friends while tailgating or watching games together, and the pride they have for their university and its achievements, both athletic and academic.  

Lu Ratzlaff, ’78, better known as “Cookie Man,” who has faced multiple health problems in recent years, described a moment with Mitch Canham, ’11, Pat Casey Head Baseball Coach: “I thanked him. I said, ‘You don’t realize what you guys do for me. If I have a bad day or something, I forget about it because I’m watching the guys run.’”

Being a fan, it turns out, is about more than following a team. It’s about finding connection, joy and sometimes escape. In other words, being a fan, like being part of the
Oregon State University community, just makes life better.

Come eat cookies, make buttons and tell us about your favorite superfan at the Alumni Center before the Homecoming game on Oct. 11. We want to celebrate what no NCAA rule changes can touch: you.