We Asked For Your “Fluffhead” College Gameday Sign Stories and You Answered

Rob Slater on December 31, 2016

For almost 25 years now, College Gameday has been synonymous with Saturdays in the fall. There’s something refreshing about waking up a little early on a Saturday morning, turning on ESPN and watching Lee Corso, Kirk Herbstreit and the gang kick around the latest hot takes in college football in front of a throng of fans from that particular school.

What grew out of the Gameday phenomenon was, among other things (like Corso’s now-iconic headgear pick), the signs displayed for the entire country to see. It doesn’t take an internet genius to find a whole collection of them and hell, USA Today does a recap on the signs alone just about every Saturday afternoon. They range from dumb to funny to downright crudely hilarious. Nothing is off limits and no one is safe from the posterboard jokesters. Gameday signs have famously earned a kid thousands of dollars in beer money and outed Nick Saban’s dating habits but the one sign that I always looked out for over the years was, of course, the Fluffhead sign.

There was nothing funnier than listening to an intense conversation about who should be in the BCS Championship game or how Urban Meyer will gameplan against the Michigan offense with a giant neon FLUFFHEAD dangling in the background. The word alone is destined to grab your attention, but slapped on a 10-foot sign makes it unnervingly noticeable.

The “Fluffhead” tale can be traced back to 2005 when it appeared at a college basketball game and would then return in 2007 but things really heated up following Phish’s reunion in 2009 and you can practically bet on a “Fluffhead” sign living next to Kirk Herbstreit’s head just about every Saturday. The oral history of the “Fluffhead” sign is better off told by those who decided to wait long hours in the sun to get on television. Enjoy the below stories of Phish and college football fandom intersecting in a beautiful way.

University of Florida | November 12, 2016

We come from the Land of Lizards. (Go Gators!). Besides Phish shows, our other passion is the University of Florida. My beau, Arnie Harrison, and I, Carol Strauss, are University of Florida alumni and love to spend fall weekends cheering on the orange and blue. During that 300 mile trip from our home in South Florida to The Swamp, we get our game-faces on with the MEGA JAMS! The Hampton ’13 “Carini,” the Orange Beach ’14 “Boogielope” and the Dicks ’15 “Harpua” encore are some of our favorite pre-game rituals. When we heard SEC Nation was going to be broadcasting live from Gainesville on November 12th, we knew it was our time to shine a light on the University of Florida Phish community. We’re so appreciative of Phish 3.0 and try to go to as many shows each tour as possible. We created our “Fluffhead” sign to share our pulsating love and light with our fellow college football Phish phans across the country. We love you Phish! The Jam Band National Champions since 1987! Boy. Man. God. Gators.

Forever Grateful,

Carol & AJ

University of Michigan | September 7, 2013

My wife is originally from Ann Arbor and graduated from U of M. I proposed to her on campus in ’05 and we also got married there as well. Her parents still there there for half of the year and then spend the other half in Austin, where we live. We always go back to A2 in the fall to tailgate and see a game.

I’ve always been a huge Gameday fan since I met my wife in 2003. She was the one who turned me on to watching college football and the Wolverines. Watching Gameday became a Saturday ritual from then on.

I would always randomly see a FLUFFHEAD sign and loved how odd it was to see a Phish reference on a college football show.

Growing up in NJ, I got to see a lot of Phish shows throughout the year. My first show was at MSG on 12/30/94 and was hooked ever since. My last show before the break-up was on 6/18/04 at Coney Island–the one where Jay Z came out for a couple songs.

Years later, when the band got back together in ’09, my wife and I had recently moved from Chicago to Austin so I didn’t have many opportunities to see shows and hadn’t really listened to Phish in a long time. I had moved on at that point and lost interest.

Fast forward to 2012, my wife and I came back to NJ for Christmas to visit my family, along with our 7 month old son. I decided to hit up the 12/28/12 show at MSG with my best friend who I had seen the majority of my shows with (I’ve seen about 46 now) and was instantly pulled back in to listening to shows and attending 2-3/year, usually for an annual guys weekend at SPAC.

Since I started listening to them again, I joined Phantasytour and began posting under “KennyBania”. I would read about the FLUFFHEAD sign sightings and its history from when the band had shelved the song for a while. Since then, the sign would make the random live sporting event appearance or evenly show up at a Whitney Houston memorial outside her funeral.

When we booked our trip for Ann Arbor in the fall of 2013, I figured there might be a good chance that Gameday would be there, especially since it was against Notre Dame and that annual rivalry game was coming to an end. The night before the game, I rummaged through my in-laws basement and found a huge piece of white poster board that was perfect for a sign. I figured a FLUFFHEAD sign would be the perfect way to represent the Michigan faithful and Phantasytour would also get a kick out of it.

I got to campus that Saturday morning about 30 minutes before the show started and the place was packed. Apparently students had been there since 2 AM and the inner-ring had been closed off for a while so I was stuck on the outside periphery, in a sightline somewhere between Chris Fowler and Desmond Howard, way in the back. Turns out I was in a perfect spot for prime placement throughout the show.

My subsequent visits to An Arbor have been on Gameday-less weekends and it has been quite a while since Gameday has visited Austin for a UT football game but the sign is standing by and ready.

John (KennyBania)

University of South Carolina | October 6, 2012

Well we, Solomon and I, did it.

We talked about it for weeks and came up with the idea of getting three large poster boards, combining them together for a massive Fluffhead sign.

The boys had been back for a few years and things were starting to flow. So in honor of Our Boys, we set out to display a massive GameDay sign.

We closed the bar at 2am and went straight home, bringing eight more hands to help is fill in the gaps. Two hours later and a quick stop at the Waffle House we ventured onward to the campus of USC, home of the Gamecocks – 2001, you can’t beat it.

Anyway, after fighting a bunch of Young Life moons trying to ride the rail (you know what I’m talking about), we took a step back and focused on the cameras flying overhead. We saw that one flew over the crowd and hung out towards the back of the venue. Our eyes locked, no talk needed, we knew that was out spot. So we squirming coiled our way off the rail and towards the back.

10 AM.

We are live and the camera flys towards us. We unroll the sign and proudly display it with confused looks galore.

Five minutes go by and the cell phone blows up–we’ve been spotted all around the nation. Job well done, it’s in the history books.

We are everywhere.

Randy Hope
Solomon Hay

Temple University | October 31, 2015

I heard Phish before I knew the band existed when the chorus from “Reba” blared from the windows of the oldest bunk at my sleep-away camp around 1995-1996. Bag it, tag it, had no idea what it was, but liked it. I was 12. I am 33 now. But I really started to get into Phish when I heard “Character Zero” from Billy Breathes and started showing my friends this bad-ass music.

Saw three shows in 1.0 (7/10/99; 12/11/99; 7/4/00) and then started devouring their music during the hiatus. I loved discovering unbelievable jams and then sharing them with my friends. Saw a bunch of 2.0 shows and continue to see the band in the 3.0 era.

I saw a post on PT where someone said we need a “Fluffhead” sign at Gameday in Philadelphia. I lived around the corner from Independence Hall and would regret if I did not try to make it on the broadcast. The day before I bought bright green posterboard and a long wooden 1×2 so I could hoist it above the crowd and the morning of I created the sign. I went to the broadcast with a friend pretty early so there was no line and found a spot near the overhead roving camera.

I decided to add the ? to the “Fluffhead” for the last “Fluffhead” before “Fluffs Travels” composed section. I know, I am a huge dork, but thought it would be a nice nuanced twist.

I knew I got on TV when my cell was getting blown up by texts so I checked social media to confirm and saw I made it. Victory! Had a blast.

Jacob Rosner

And here are some more miscellaneous photos submitted. Have a story of your own? Shoot us an email: rob(at)relix(dot)com.