Hockey’s Farcical Fans

One of the reasons it’s difficult to name the best sports super-fan group in the history of the world is that there’s not much evidence to compare. This book documents the activity of a late 1970s group known as the Farce, who were active at the same time college hockey was in a golden era while Herb Brooks and college players improved in preparation for the United States’ 1980 Olympic game against the Soviets.

The Farce was blessed to be influenced by great movies during the 1970s:

• From Star Wars they derived their name from a variation of “May the Force be with you.” Wearing yellow plastic helmets with red lights on top that Darth Vader wouldn’t have worn, they became the Farce, as in “May the Farce be with you.”

• From Monty Python and the Holy Grail, they personified the “French Taunter” from seats next to low plexiglass. Their targets included Herb Brooks and twelve of the twenty players who, the following year, upset the Soviets in the 1980 Olympics. The following are the same: Herb Brooks and his team seeking the gold medal and King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table seeking the Holy Grail, and taunts from a French castle wall or taunts from seats next to low plexiglass.

• From the Slap Shot hockey movie, the Farce were the Hanson brothers of hockey fans.

These subliminal influences served the Farce well when they responded to the Michigan hockey player who took their stuffed Kermit the Frog mascot during pre-game warm-ups or when they responded to student protestors from Iran in 1978 at a Jimmy Carter event in Duluth. As you read this book, you may find that, at a minimum, the Farce was the best super-fan group for college hockey at the University of North Dakota in the Levity (late) 1970s.

Sid graduated from the University of North Dakota and then earned a master’s degree from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. Watching hockey has been his lifelong passion. From serving as a hockey-team student manager at Grand Forks Central High, to joining the Farce at UND, to traveling across the border from Seattle for his seventeen-year, eleven-game package with the Canucks and the past five years with the Seattle Kraken, Sid has appreciated his teams. (It’s interesting that he hasn’t mentioned University of Minnesota hockey here. Undergraduate loyalty rules.)