PMP 2024: Big Ten Student Sections

I have two remaining "Pick My Post" requests from last summer's fundraiser. Both were podcast guest requests, and both were requests I was unable to fulfill. So I asked both of the donators (wait, that should probably just be "donors") if they have a secondary request. Perhaps a written article instead of a podcast?

If you're not familiar with how the PMP thing works, it's a fundraiser where, for a donation to a scholarship fund, I write whatever article you want written. Here's one of the "instead of a podcast, what can I write for you?" requests that came in:

{An article} about the B1G basketball student sections. Maybe traditions, effectiveness, size, locations, history? Would piggyback off recent Krush news and maybe see where we fit in historically as well as currently.

~Ben J.

Perfect. He requested this three minutes ago and my brain is already alive with what I can write.

First off, my credentials: I am a former Krush member. In fact, I'm old enough to be able so say that I was a member of both Orange Crush and Orange Krush because the change from "C" to "K" happened in 1993. So I'm going to speak to this issue as someone who:

A. Was a member of a Big Ten student section
B. Now sits directly in front of Krush for every home game
C. Has covered a game in 12 of the 13 (well, I guess it's 17 now) opposing Big Ten arenas. The one I'm missing from the 14-team Big Ten is the one I force Tyler to cover every year: Northwestern. So I can't speak to the 31 Northwestern students who attend games (he's got jokes!).

I'm not going to be able to review all of them. But let me just speak to the general tone of things. In the 2020's, there are three types of Big Ten student sections. I could put every single Big Ten student section into one of these three categories. The prototypes would be Maryland, Purdue, and Ohio State.

The Maryland student section is the prime example of an insult student section. They lap the field when it comes to things shouted (and, yes, thrown) at opposing players. They openly booed the announcement that their chants towards Terrence Shannon were out of line. I believe they were all born with four middle fingers. I've seen students kicked out for tossing chicken nuggets at the Illini bench. Basically, they see themselves as existing on a battlefield. The discomfort for the opponent will come from the words they choose, not from the noise.

You might remember this video I shared from the Maryland game in January of 2022. I was in the stands for that game, and this Maryland fan snuck into the opposing fan seats behind the bench to lob insults at the Illini players. Maryland has the most police presence on the floor (by far) and this is a typical scene during a Maryland game:

So that's one type. The "Insult" student section.

There is also the Uninterested Student Section. Ohio State is the archetype. I'm old so I can call it the "they're on their phones again" student section.

The Ohio State student section last January made the least amount of noise I've ever heard from a Big Ten student section. This was just before Chris Holtmann was fired. I sat right by the Indiana student section last month (just before Mike Woodson was fired) and they were VOCAL. Angry. I sat by the Ohio State student section just before Holtmann was fired and they were apathetic.

(I should note... we dealt with a lot of that fan apathy back in the 2010's. Anger at the end of Weber turned to apathy at the end of Groce. So we certainly have experience batting apathy. I'm sure the Krush leaders at the time are shaking their heads up and down at this point.)

The third type – and believe me when I tell you how much this pains me to write – is the fully engaged student section like... Purdue. They are, by far, the best student section right now. Paint Crew 2025 = Orange Krush 2005. The noise is just unreal. Thousands of students fully engaged with the game. And it's a collective. The noise is as one.

A great college student section needs to feel almost.. cult-ish? Opposing fans should walk away thinking that they're WAY too into their team. Lockstep committed to the same cause. That's the feeling at Purdue.

Maybe the best way to generalize this is to just pick three for each category. And I'll go back through the three categories in reverse order here. The Big Ten student sections as I see them in 2025:

Cult-ish (And That's A Good Thing) Student Sections

Best examples: Purdue, Rutgers, Michigan State

I just described Purdue, so let me just say that Rutgers is clearly #1 for me in terms of "fan engagement to winning program ratio." I've now covered four games there and they're just so locked in on the game. Sometimes I feel like every single Big Ten student section should take a field trip to Rutgers just to see how engaged they are. The largest compliment I can give them is to say that every time I go there, as an Illini fan, I have this internal "yes, I get it, you love your team, you can stop now" reaction. That's a great emotion for a student section to elicit.

It also pains me to put Michigan State here but it's true. The team might have taken a step back in the 2020's but the Izzone hasn't. The Paint Crew is loud and engaged because the team has been great. The Izzone is loud and engaged because the teams in the 2000's and 2010's were great and they're not going to shut up until they return.

I don't like that I no longer put Illinois in this category, but we'll get to that in a bit. We're still very loud, it's just... I'll get to that in a bit.

Uninterested Student Sections

Best examples: Ohio State, Minnesota, Michigan

Minnesota is self-explanatory (terrible basketball for so long... how could they be engaged?). Michigan is probably a better environment this year but I haven't been there yet. Speaking from my experience at Michigan last year, I was shocked at the apathy in Ann Arbor. Much like the Ohio State thing I described above, I kind of expected anger (like I saw at Indiana a month ago) but it was mostly apathy.

(Football plays into that as well. Note that I have both Ohio State and Michigan listed here. Our game at Michigan last year was two days after their football national championship celebration. They were all mostly out on Juwan Howard but... why boo him when they can just pull out their phones and watch the fourth quarter of the title game again?)

As I stated above, Ohio State is the best example of this. Even when Ohio State has been good and I've been at the Schott to watch them beat us, the student section never stands out. It just feels disorganized. It's difficult to do in an NBA arena like that, but there's no reason that Rutgers should have a rowdy and engaged student section while Ohio State has fans on their phones.

Insult Student Sections

Best examples: Maryland, Illinois, Iowa

As a former Krush member, it pains me to put Krush here. But I don't think there's a single person who sits on media row who wouldn't say that Illinois has moved to this category. Maybe that's just a function of the proximity to the opponent's bench with the new seating arrangement since 2016 (perhaps sitting in front of the baseline Krush section would be a different experience?) but we've switched from a Purdue-like student section to a more Maryland-like student section over the past 10 years. Poll Big Ten basketball players on where they hear the most insults and I can almost guarantee it's Champaign.

Before you react to that, please give me an opportunity to explain exactly what I mean. I doubt there are many Krush members who are even aware that it's changed over the last 15 years. These are 18-22 year olds who are...

A. Predominantly from Chicago where their fan experience was, uh, difficult during their high school years. They're just yelling at Illini players like their dad yelled at Zach LaVine.
B. Part of a post-Barstool world where fan decorum took a turn towards "mean."
and
C. Closer to the opposing bench and the scorers table than maybe any other student section in the Big Ten apart from Michigan State (there's a reason Maryland removes their fans who try to sneak over there).

I'm not saying that Krush is "bad." The State Farm Center is still top-5 loudest in the Big Ten. I purposely haven't entered any of the Krush debates on Twitter because I feel like they mostly miss the mark. There is no doubt in my mind that Krush deeply cares about the outcome of the game. This is not apathy.

I am simply stating that, as someone seated directly in front of them at least 8 times every season since the renovations (and, since I moved here in 2020, at least 15 times every season), there has been a gradual shift from Purdue-like student section to Maryland-like student section. Individual callouts (at our players, at their players, at their coach) are up 500% over that time.

I don't think it's something I could explain to a current Krush member. The best I've got is to compare it to some 22 year-old working for a political campaign in 2024 being told what the Obama-Romney election cycle was like in 2012. To them, it would sound like I'm referencing something from the 1960's. It's all changed so drastically that my description wouldn't even make sense.

And, honestly, it doesn't matter if I could explain it to them or not. This is the world now. This is how things operate in 2025. When you're in your 50's, any time you find yourself starting a sentence with "this younger generation...", immediately accept that you're wrong and fully know that it's never going to go back to the way you see it.

But that's the best way I can describe all of this from my view. The Maryland video above? The one of the Maryland student sneaking into the Illini family section to yell insults at Illini players and coaches? Show it to a member of the Paint Crew at Purdue and they'd say "what a loser." Show that to a member of the Hawks Nest at Iowa and they'd say "what a legend."

The solution? I don't have one. I'm old. Society has changed. Just the casual mention of Barstool above will have Stoolies in my mentions for weeks calling me soft. Mean is the new loud, and while Purdue and Rutgers have somehow avoided it so far, it might eventually catch up to them as well.

I do have hope that things will change in the State Farm Center, though. Society might all regressing towards the mean (get it?), but there can still be a shift away from the vocal 5% in Krush who seem to set the tone every game. There was a moment in the UCLA game where one of the Krush leaders ran up and down the aisle begging for more noise and it's as if the Krush members in the back five rows took it as "we no longer have to stay quiet and listen for the one-liners."

I've also noticed that Krush leadership seems different this year. Maybe I just didn't notice this before, but Krush leadership in 2025 appears to be 75% female now? The insults – the people setting the tone – are 98% male but the female fans behind me mostly seem focused on noise. My answer to nearly every Krush question I've been asked this year is "the female fans in Krush are killing it."

There was a moment a few games ago (it was either Maryland or USC) during a timeout where the female fans behind me were letting the refs have it ("call it both ways") and two male fans behind me were letting Underwood have it ("no more threes, Brad"). That probably paints the picture the best. Those girls were happy to be close enough to the court to let the ref have it. Those guys were happy to be close enough to coach the team.

And that's the answer. That's the difference between Maryland and Purdue. It's "Me vs. We." Disrupting the opponent's performance is accomplished through collective noise, not "everybody be quiet so they can hear my devastating insult." The tone must be "they couldn't hear their coach call out the play", not "bro, did you hear what I said to him?" Purdue gets it, Maryland doesn't.

Whew. Ben asked about all Big Ten student sections and I guess I had some things to get off my chest. Let me go back to his question and see if I missed anything.

{An article} about the B1G basketball student sections. Maybe traditions, effectiveness, size, locations, history? Would piggyback off recent Krush news and maybe see where we fit in historically as well as currently.

~Ben J.

Hey, look at that, I guess he did ask for this to "piggyback off recent Krush news" so I guess I am answering his question here. But I didn't really touch on "history" so let me close it out by talking about that.

When I was in Krush, there was great pride that other schools didn't even have something like what we had. As I recall (I was a freshman in 1991), the only other "named" student section you heard about on TV broadcasts at the time were the Cameron Crazies at Duke. Once you started to hear about the Orange Crush everywhere (with the Flyin' Illini teams), soon after that was when the soda company said "hey, you can't use our logo" and the name was changed to Orange Krush in 1993.

In the conference, Indiana was known for their a massive student section (they always claimed it was the largest in the country), but I don't recall a name for it back then. I do remember that they tried to use "Crimson Crazies" for a while but then Duke was all "you copied that from us" and they eventually changed to "Crimson Guard."

Because Orange Crush had seats on the floor (literally on the concrete floor of the old circular arrangement of our Assembly Hall), and because the area behind the north basket was a wall of orange shirts on bleachers, other schools moved to get their students closer to the floor. Michigan State started moving more students down towards the floor in the 1990's and by the 2000's the "Izzone" was born. Other schools moved towards first-come, first-served general student seating where anyone could get close to the court if they were willing to camp out.

And Krush, for a long time, was the gold standard in the Big Ten. So much so that they eventually built a fundraising arm which required a lot of individual fundraising to be done just to earn a spot in Krush. There was genuine student panic over whether they could get in.

Just like all things Illini Sports in the 2010's, that eventually faded away. At one point during our NCAA Tournament drought I don't believe the number of Krush applications even reached the number of Krush seats (the orange ones). I believe it was then that the fundraising requirement was dropped (but I might have that wrong). Either way, the administration let basketball sink to its lowest point since the 1970's and Krush suffered.

It was during this same timeframe that the other student sections in the Big Ten made a huge surge (especially The Paint Crew). When I started covering games on the road, Rutgers was the first "holy crap that student section is amazing" experience I had. My first trip to Purdue blew me away. I had experienced Michigan State before, but Wisconsin, Indiana, and even Nebraska all impressed me.

Which meant – through a combination of everyone mentioned above but likely to be laid mostly at the feet of Bruce Weber and John Groce – that the student section I participated in was no longer the gold standard in the Big Ten. And it was in that environment that Krush, in my view, started the shift towards "what if we just become Maryland?"

All of the winning over the last few years has it primed to return. As I said several times above, it's not that Krush doesn't get loud for big moments in a game. When I read debates on Twitter about Krush "not making any noise" I have a very strong reaction against it. The apathy of the 2010's has faded away and a Morez Johnson dunk in 2025 is much louder than a Giorgi dunk in 2019. Krush makes a lot of noise.

The tone could use some work, though. The focus. And that's my concluding thought here. We're now know for "man, Illinois fans are MEAN" and I don't think that's a good thing.

So if Purdue is "let them have it" and Maryland is "let him have it", we've drifted towards Maryland. Some of the personal insults lobbed at Skyy Clark on Tuesday were, in my opinion, way over the line. You want to collectively boo him every time he touches the ball? Go for it. You want to wait until he's close enough to hear you and then personally insult him?

Just like the guy in the Len Bias jersey at Maryland, you should be removed from shouting range.