Traditions in sports are a tale as old as time. They go back to the days of Ancient Greece and play an essential role in sporting events today. Singing the national anthem before the start of a match, the seventh-inning stretch at a baseball game, or the handshake line at the end of a playoff hockey series are all examples of generation-long traditions that still take place in modern-day games. Some traditions, though, are not so historical but looked upon as bizarre. Let’s look at some of the oddest traditions in sports.
The Rally Towel
Rally towels are often seen during playoff games and have a long history of being a tradition. Before playoff games, teams will lay out rally towels for fans to wave around during the game. These towels will usually appear in the team’s color and feature a phrase or logo on the smaller-sized cloth. Its history dates back to Western Kentucky University’s Basketball coach waving a red towel on the bench to signal his players and excite his team. “The Red Towel” became a tradition at Western Kentucky and is now featured as their school logo.
The “Terrible Towel” is another popular iteration of rally towels. Created as an idea by Pittsburgh Steelers radio broadcaster Myron Cope, the “Terrible Towel” has become a Steelers tradition for nearly 50 years. During that time, more versions of the towel were released to the public, though the original remains the most famous. Every Steelers home game, a special guest will lead the crowd in the “Terrible Towel Swirl” before kickoff, where the guest rallies the crowd by waving the towel. While the towel may be terrible, it does serve as a great tradition and decoration.
The Teddy Bear Toss
Usually, the mantra is “It’s raining cats and dogs,” which refers to heavy rain. At minor league hockey games, however, that expression is literal. The Teddy Bear Toss is an annual tradition that takes place around the holidays and happens for one night only. Leagues such as the AHL (American Hockey League) and ECHL (East Coast Hockey League) are known to participate in this tradition.
On Teddy Bear Toss night, fans bring stuffed animals to the arena and wait for the home team to score. When that team scores their first goal of the game, fans toss the stuffed animals onto the ice and watch as teddy bears fly through the sky. While the site is unique, the best part of the tradition is what happens after the toys are all cleaned off the ice. The next day, the team donates all stuffed animals to charities and hospitals. The Hershey Bears set the record earlier this month after fans threw over 100,000 stuffed animals from the stands.
Buffalo Bills Tailgate Table Jump
Unlike any other tradition on this list, this one has little history and has been discouraged by the team. The tradition is in the title. Bills fans bring folding tables and jump into them. It’s a short and painful tradition that seems rather complex. Why would fans jump onto a folded table? Well, there’s a reason why Bills fans go by “Bills Mafia,” the moniker given to the rowdy fans.
The tradition is less than a decade old, though the first-ever Bills table jump is a mystery. Clips of fans jumping through folding tables in the parking lot at Bills games started to appear on social media, causing the tradition to be born. The Bills banned the jump at their stadium due to the risk of injury and to discourage fans from partaking. The only problem is that fans still do it, and the tradition has shown no signs of stopping.
Toast Throw
College Football has its fair share of traditions. None are as unique as the University of Pennsylvania’s Toast Throw. Fans shower the field in bread during the team fight song when the lyrics “Here’s a toast to dear old Penn” are sung. Then, a Toast-Zamboni, which students at UPenn engineered themselves, cleans up the field/track of all the bread.
Fans at UPenn have been throwing toast from the stands since the 1970s. They used to take a drink at the same time as the lyric; however, the school’s ban on alcohol ended that tradition. Instead, the lyric toast became literal, leading to today’s tradition.
Rats on the Ice
If you’re a sports fan, you have likely heard of a hat trick, a term popular in hockey and soccer when a player scores three goals in one game. However, in 1995, there was the rat trick. For 29 seasons, fans of the NHL’s Florida Panthers have thrown toy rats onto the ice to celebrate victories. It wasn’t always after wins, though.
The tradition began after a rat, seen inside the Florida Panthers locker room, was killed by player Scott Mellanby. Following a win that night where Mellanby scored two goals, goaltender John Vanbiesbrouck named his performance “The Rat Trick.” That season, Panthers fans would throw plastic rats on the ice after every goal. Due to the delays this would cause in the game, the NHL constructed a rule prohibiting the celebration after goals. Since then, rats have been thrown onto the ice after every win.
Rats have been ingrained into Panthers culture ever since. The team introduced a second mascot in 2014 to represent the tradition. His name is Viktor E. Ratt, which, when sounded out, leaves you with the tradition as it stands.
Red Wings Octopus Throw and Predators Catfish Throw
Saving the oddest for last, the Detroit Red Wings and Nashville Predators take their traditions a bit further. They don’t throw stuffed animals on the ice, nor do they throw toy rats. Instead, they throw actual octopi and catfish.
Focusing on Detroit, the team’s history with throwing octopi dates back to the 1950s when two brothers decided to throw the animal onto the ice before Game 4 of the finals that year. Detroit went on to win that game, winning the Stanley Cup in a sweep. At the time, teams only needed eight wins in the playoffs, as the league only featured six teams. Since octopuses have eight limbs, the brothers threw one on the ice. The tradition has stuck with the team ever since.
The Red Wings had a giant octopus named Al (named after their Zamboni driver Al Sobotka) constructed and hung in their old arena. However, after the team moved to a new Stadium in 2017, saw the NHL ban the tradition, and the Red Wings left Al, the mascot, behind, the team has not qualified for the playoffs since.
In 1999, the Predators became an expansion NHL team. That same season, a fan threw the first catfish on the ice before the game. It’s believed that the fan threw it to counteract the Red Wings tradition of throwing octopuses on the ice. The tradition stuck in Nashville, and catfish are still thrown onto the ice before games. Much like Detroit, however, the NHL has cracked down on the throwing of catfish.
Traditions in sports can get weird and messy. However, they have a long and rich history. They are a part of the sport’s culture and only grow as time passes. This also shows just how passionate some fans and teams can be.
