UVA’s Biggest Fan Is A Real Life Blue Palaski

Nathaniel Light11 years ago

Jerry Reid might be the most unusual student taking part in March Madness this year. You might remember our story about the UVA student from last year–but you probably don’t.

Anyway, in 2011, Jerry decided it was time to go back to college at the age of 66. He enrolled at the University of Virginia and joined the Chi Phi Fraternity shortly after school began, against his wife Susan’s wishes.

The now 70-year-old frat boy has recently become a fixture at UVA basketball games. Reid sits prominently in the student section as he and his fellow students, who are five decades his junior, cheer on the Cavaliers. Regularly donning a bright orange wig, the students are impressed by his enthusiasm.

“He’s one of the most passionate fans there is,” said Haider Arshad, president of UVA’s “Hoo Crew,” which is the school’s student cheering section. I would normally make fun of anyone who joins a student cheering section and call them a geed, but Reid is 70. I’ll cut him a break.

The senior citizen senior, who will graduate this May, has admitted that he sometimes shows up to the games four hours in advance to secure his preferred spot behind the visiting team’s bench.

Rather than pounding whiskey and beers before heading to the games like a normal student, Reid prefers hot chocolate with extra whipped cream before he joins the students to taunt the officials and the visiting team.

When the Cavaliers don’t play at home, Reid watches the games with his wife at The Virginian, a local bar.

“I’m having a major attack of senioritis,” said the 70-year-old undergraduate. Apart from being a die hard Cavaliers fan and a member of Chi Phi, the septuagenarian is also a member of a campus literary society and a debating society, and his intramural team boasts two flag football championships. For a senior in college, the dude certainly has his shit together.

“I think I know what I want to be when I grow up,” Reid said, citing his hopes to work in student affairs. He also plans on writing a memoir. I’d read the shit out of that book.

[via The Wall Street Journal]

Image via Dillon Harding/Virginia Athletics