Orange Fans Need To Step Up At Away Games

By Amber McElrath – Syracuse, N.Y. (CitrusTV) – Over the summer, Syracuse was ranked the number one university in school spirit by the Princeton College Review. Princeton surveyed 138,000 students across the country to decide their rankings, according to their website.

On October 5, Syracuse Football traveled to Pittsburgh for an ACC rivalry matchup against the University of Pittsburgh Panthers. The Syracuse fan club Otto’s Army organized a fan bus for the away game.

“I think there will be a decent number of fans at the game because Syracuse usually travels pretty well,” Otto’s Army Senior Advisor Austin Freer said.

There were 50 tickets sold for the fan bus this year and students were so interested that Otto’s Army had to go on a waitlist. The bus left at 5 a.m. on Saturday and drove five and a half hours to Pittsburgh, then the Syracuse students left right after the game, got back on the bus, and returned home.

The game against Pitt was not the greatest, and not only because of the orange’s overtime loss to the panthers. There were not very many Syracuse fans in the crowd. Granted, the game was on a rain delay and it was not ideal weather for an outdoor football game.

Besides the home field of the Carrier Dome, Pittsburgh is the closest school that Syracuse plays in the ACC. Pitt students, however, did not seem impressed by the turnout from Syracuse fans at the game.

“I guess I expected there to be a giant orange section for the Syracuse fans,” Pitt Student Jason Walker said.

The seats where the away team normally sits were only partially filled. Walker said that when the panthers played Penn State, the stadium was sold out and packed to the brim with fans from both sides. There were even similar weather conditions during the Penn State game.

Pittsburgh is still far for an easily accessible away game, but the lack of Syracuse students seemed surprising. The only students there besides the football team, were those that came with Otto’s Army.

Otto’s Army tries to do a fan bus every year, and sometimes twice if they can find an available game for each semester. The fan bus for next year is still in the works, but maybe more students will be interested in going, maybe even enough for two buses.