If you go to a men's basketball game at Mizzou Arena, you'll notice two separate student fan groups. The larger one, in yellow T-shirts, is the school-sponsored Zou Crew. The smaller, louder, more enthusiastic, more obnoxious one, a motley crew of 30 or so guys in black T-shirts, is the decidedly not-school-sponsored Antlers.
It all started back in the 1970s, when the Missouri Tigers played their games at the Hearnes Center, which at the time "featured the same buzz as bingo night at a mausoleum," in the words of St. Louis Post-Dispatch sportswriter Jeff Gordon. A group of guys from the Hudson Hall dormitory decided that they wanted to spice things up a bit.
Rob "The Hammer" Banning ("a human foghorn"), Bruce Breslow ("a New York-bred master of the random insult"), Gordon, and several other buddies started taunting opponents from the front row. Because the crowds were small, you could hear their barbs ringing through the quiet arena. They chanted "Andre Smith, eat my shorts" until the Nebraska center snapped and threw the ball at them. They chanted "Uthoff, you doorknob, you gravy-sucking pig," until Iowa State's 6-foot-11, 260-pound behemoth showed up at their dorm. They also did an "Antler dance," putting their hands up top of their heads, which gave the group its name.
Through the years, the Antlers have continued to find creative ways to get under the skin of opponents, while always maintaining a certain outlaw status with respect to the university. They were rebels with a cause, somewhat subversive, perhaps profane, and always over-the-top. Sometimes, they went too far. But their dirtiest deeds have become the stuff of legend.
The Antlers have tackled mascots and confronted referees. Once, the story goes, the Antlers dumped a vat of pig blood on legendary Arkansas Razorbacks coach Nolan Richardson. Another time, an Oklahoma coach, his exact identity lost to history, but probably Billy Tubbs, said that the Antlers made him sick. So one of the group's members approached the coach in a restaurant, disguised as a Sooners fan seeking an autograph. When Tubbs came over, the kid revealed his Antlers jersey and puked at Tubbs' feet.
One time, when I was a student at Mizzou, an opposing team's assistant coach who'd had an amputation. The Antlers sang out, "I've got one hand in my pocket, and the other one is nonexistent." I wasn't surprised by the cruelty—I'd heard worse. But I was shocked to learn that the group listened to Alanis Morissette.
Kasey Devine didn't know about any of that history when he joined the Antlers as a sophomore sport-management major in 2012. He was simply looking for a better fan experience, after spending one season as a member of Zou Crew and coming away unimpressed. "They have all these great seats, and they can’t fill them," he says. "When they do, they’re not cheering, they’re not being loud, they’re not standing up the entire game."
So he signed up for the Antlers, and he found that, despite outward appearances, the members were genuinely good people. "I found that they were a really nice group of guys, and really at the heart of everything they do is the hope for success for Mizzou athletics," he says. The Antlers' stated goal is to make Mizzou Arena the toughest place to play in the country. They want to be a human home-court advantage.
This season marks Devine's second with the group. This year's squad includes quite a few freshman, and Devine says that at the first few homes games, they were struggling to be clever without being crude, disruptive without being disrespectful.
The university administration took note of their missteps, and called in Emmett Delaney, the group's Grand Poobah, for a meeting. They gave him a list of "observations"—chants and cheers that didn't reflect the university's core values. Against Southeast Louisiana, they yelled out, "Raise your hand if you thought Hurricane Katrina was a good thing." When an opposing player got injured, they hollered for the trainer to "just give him a box of tampons." They referred to a fan with a Kansas sign as a "failed abortion." Others are even less fit to print. One sexually suggestive chant led a family to flee. The university told them to cut it out.
"It was a really productive meeting," Devine says. The guys promised to clean up their act. In fact, they had already held an internal meeting to discuss avoiding such "low-hanging fruit," in an effort to set higher standards, Devine says. Delaney told the guys, "There is no room for this in the group, and if you’re going to do that, you need to leave."
When the Tigers hosted Gardner-Webb a day later, the group greeted the Runnin' Bulldogs with "scum, scum, scum, go back to where you're from…and die!" It's a chant the Antlers have used for at least a decade. They were promptly ejected, before the game had even begun. At the next game, against IUPUI, the Antlers decided to have some fun with the controversy. They showed up in suits and only cheered compliments, congratulating players from both teams on making free throws and rooting for a tie. They sang "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and read children's books aloud. "We were over-the-top sportsmen," Devine says. "We weren't sure where that line was, so we thought we would be sarcastic and never come close to it."
That didn't stop them from being ejected again. Just after halftime, they chanted "pelvic thrust, churn the butter, step to the left, cop a feel," and were removed from the arena. On their way out, Mizzou forward Tony Criswell gave the guys high-fives. Indeed, the Antlers have received an outpouring of support. Alumni have sent letters. Former Tiger center Steve Moore has offered to sit with the Antlers, figuring the administration wouldn't kick him out of a game.
Regardless of how you feel about some of the Antlers' cruder chants, the punishment does seem backward. They misbehaved at a couple of games, but weren't thrown out. Then they tried to do better, but were thrown out anyway. What message does that send?
"We’re still confused as to what we do next, but we’re kind of understanding the hard line that the athletic department is taking right now for various reasons," Delaney says. Since those two games, things have mostly died down, though a "Rusty Musket" sign was confiscated at the West Virginia game. After Mizzou beat UCLA, star guard Jordan Clarkson gave the Antlers a salute, making hand horns on his head.
Delaney is nervous that once class resumes after the winter break, tension might build again. But he also feels confident that the group still has a bright future. "It’s just frustrating because we have a lot of guys who still want to be Antlers and still want to support the university and continue that tradition," he says. "We are trying to strive to be a group of 30 guys or so that would be exactly what you want in a home-court advantage."
