After years without parade floats or banners, Ohio University Homecoming in the 1980s gave Bobcats a range of reasons to celebrate, from sky-diving stunts to victories over rival Miami.
Student apathy and preoccupation with the Vietnam War caused Ohio University Homecoming Weekend festivities to dwindle in the '70s, but a decade later students rallied to take their celebrations — and their hair — to new heights.
Soaring ticket sales for the Homecoming dances, football games and alumni luncheons in the early '80s caused former Director of Alumni Relations Barry Adams to declare that Homecoming was on the rise again.
“1980 was our best year so far,” Adams said in a previous Post report. “By all indications, 1981 can only be bigger.”
That year, a pair of parachutists from the U.S. Army’s 11th Special Forces dropped into Peden Stadium to deliver the Homecoming game football to the 50-yard line before Ohio took the field against the University of Cincinnati, according to a previous Athens Messenger report.
Also in 1981, the Black Student Cultural Programming Board was the only organization to hold a Homecoming Queen contest, limiting the pool of possible queens to only black women. Fraternities, sororities, distinguished alumni and student military members joined the queen in the parade lineup.
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The parade’s popularity called for crowds to get creative when searching for the best view.
“I climbed up on the College Gate and watched the parade from there,” Mark Baer, a freshman at the time, said in a previous Post report. “I think I had a better view than anyone.”
In 1983, the Zeta Tau Alpha and Sigma Nu Homecoming float featured a papier-mache Bobcat and "Bobkitten," Rufus’ female counterpart that appeared in parades and athletic events.
“No, it’s not Mardi Gras, it’s OU’s homecoming parade,” a caption in the 1983 Spectrum Green yearbook read.
In addition to parades and pageants, football games were often highlights of Homecoming Week.
The Bobcats faced the RedHawks in 1988 when the team was in the midst of an eight-game losing streak, the longest in school history at the time. Ohio was coming off a 42-0 loss to a then-winless Bowling Green team, but the season’s past contests didn’t matter, former Miami coach Tim Rose said in a previous Athens Messenger report.
“The Miami-OU game is a season in itself,” Rose said.
That game, Ohio beat Miami for the first time in four years.
The following year, an alumni chapter in Washington, D.C., planned a gathering at a local lounge to watch a rebroadcast of the Homecoming football game against Kent State.
“The (OU) alumni office is federal expressing a video tape of the game,” Mike Dickerson, the director of the D.C. chapter, said in a previous Post report. “We’re asking anyone who knows the score not to say.”
In 1989, the Marching 110 played a “soulful” version of “Poison” by Alice Cooper, according to a previous Post report.
Just three years later, members of the alumni band got into a scuffle with several of Miami’s football team members during a Homecoming game when the players began warming up on the sidelines before the band had finished its halftime show.
Saturday, Ohio will look for an outcome similar to that of its 1988 contest with Miami when the Bobcats take on the RedHawks at 2 p.m. in Peden Stadium.
mb076912@ohio.edu
@mayganbeeler
