If you’re like many college students, you eagerly anticipate graduation, but dread it at the same time.
On one hand, graduation means that you can land a good job and finally trade in your 1987 Geo Metro for a brand-new Audi.
On the other hand, it means that you have to grow up. Your youthful days of cheering in the MUSS at Ute football games are over.
For many students, moving from the fun-loving MUSS to the Crimson Club section is a difficult transition. Sure, the seats are better — and more red but compared to the raucous student section, the atmosphere is more subdued.
For Utah students who aren’t quite ready to retire their crazy red wigs when they graduate, there is a way to experience the best of both worlds.
Meet the FUSS — the Former Utah Student Section.
According to the group’s website, the FUSS is “a newly organized and excitable group of young alumni and Utah fans who are eager and proud to bleed red.”
FUSS founders sought to create a place in Rice-Eccles Stadium where non-students could stand up and get rowdy at football games but wouldn’t disturb fans behind them that prefer to sit, said Jeff Herring, a Young Alumni Association board member and one of the first people to join the FUSS.
“(The FUSS is) a bridge between the MUSS and the Crimson Club,” Herring said.
After graduation, many alumni don’t have the funds to become full members of the Crimson Club, Herring said. Joining the FUSS gives these alumni access to seating packages. The group gives former students a forum to be louder and rowdier than regular alumni. And, of course, the FUSS couldn’t be a student-section-inspired group without pre-game tailgating.
Before every home game, the group will meet at the alumni house to barbeque and socialize. Members are encouraged to bring meat to cook in the “FUSS pit,” described on the website as a “state-of-the-art BBQ on wheels.”
The FUSS seems like a dream come true for alumni with a Peter Pan streak in them.
Actually, it’s not just alumni who are welcome to join the FUSS.
Youngsters can join the FUSS too — to them, it’s the Future Utah Student Section.
People with no academic ties to the university are invited to join as well — to them, it’s the Fanatic Utah Support Section.
“There’s a whole community of people out there that are fans of the U that didn’t go to the U for whatever reason,” Herring said. “We wanted to make it as inclusive as possible.”
The territory of the FUSS is located directly across the field from the MUSS. Fans who have seats at the 50-yard line and don’t want to give them up can still become members of the FUSS, tailgate with the group and wear the official T-shirt for $25.
The FUSS won’t exactly rival its sister group — the MUSS — in size, however. Last year, the MUSS was 4700 strong. The FUSS, on the other hand, is shooting for 150 members and has already signed up 80, Herring said.
Besides rhyming with the MUSS, the FUSS shares similar origins with the Mighty Utah Student Section. The words “fuss” and “muss” both appear in the U’s fight song, “Utah Man”.
The following couplet is part of the chorus. “We’re up to snuff, we never bluff, we’re game for any fuss. No other gang of college men dare meet us in the muss.”