White Night reveals fans' darker side

Published online on Thursday, Sep. 17, 2009

Perhaps no other example better illustrates the place of the two football programs than "Wear White Night."

OK, the number "10" next to Boise State's name is also somewhat of a giveaway. Tonight, the Broncos will be the highest-ranked college football team to play in Fresno. It is a three-way tie, actually. The first two No. 10 teams, Oregon State (2001) and Wisconsin (2008), turned out to be severely overranked, so the Bulldogs can hope that a little coincidence sprouts into a trend.

Rankings aside, the best photograph of the state of things is White Night. You cannot walk a block in this town without hearing someone complain about Fresno State imploring all their fans to wear white, a little visual stunt for TV purposes. Not that we should be catering to such an outdated communication device as television, but Fresno State is already playing the biggest conference game on Week 3, and doing it on a Friday night. Why not pander all the way?

A woman at the bank was irate that she can't wear red. A man at the grocery store points out that Boise State will be wearing its white road uniforms, as if Broncos players will walk into the stadium, look down at the jerseys, then up at the crowd and suddenly be inspired. If Fresno State loses, crowd color coordination would be Reason Nos. 1, 2 and 3.

You'd swear people had been asked to wear white to someone else's wedding. Although now that Fresno State is no longer undefeated, shouldn't it be Off-White Night?

(On the white theme, the two teams will again be playing for the "Milk Jug," although no one seems to know when or why that started, or more importantly, if a tradition qualifies as a tradition if no one is aware of it.)

Boise State fans, on the other hand, would happily show up to Bring Your Ex-Wife to a Game Night. This season, Boise State is releasing different seating charts for televised games, showing what color -- blue, orange or white -- fans should wear depending on what section of Bronco Stadium they sit in. They did it, too, pulling off a striped stadium. Even in crowd cooperation, Boise is ahead of the curve.

In Fresno, that would cause mass boycotting. A special series of City Council meetings would be called. You want us to do what?

This is, you might remember, a football community that complained so much about a mascot upgrade that the athletic department had to change him back.

Bulldog Nation is a proud and stubborn following, and no doubt some will wear red tonight no matter what. Just remember an entire stadium of people wearing white looks cool at night, and sometimes it's fun to just look cool. Other schools are doing it. It's all the rage, and you don't want to be the school finally getting to White Night when everyone else has moved on to elephants, fire-breathers and video screens so big they interfere with the football game.

Television producers certainly don't mind the promotion, but they have nothing to do with it. Fresno State wanted to do a White Night before the schedule even came out, and since this game might be the only televised affair in Fresno this season, it was the obvious choice.

The first order of 5,000 special game day T-shirts was gone by Thursday, and people were snapping up other white shirts.

Frankly, it's the perfect opportunity to break out the "Underdogs to Wonderdogs" T-shirts from the College World Series. Not only are they white, but they also give you the opportunity to make the point on television that while Fresno State might not be at a Broncos level footballwise, it does have a national championship.

So there!