HARTFORD — Wedged into the crowd at Vaughan’s Public House, Matt Sullivan, a software engineer from Denver, sipped beer from two glasses on the bar and said “I’m energized.”
It was just after 2 p.m., nearly four hours before the UConn basketball team faced Providence at the XL Center, nearly four hours since his flight touched down at Bradley International Airport — and just the beginning of a day that saw Sullivan walk Pratt Street like a king, with passersby approaching and saying “Larry!”
In the UConn social media universe, that bastion of basketball lunacy, Sullivan is simply BigLarryForearm and a minor celebrity in a corner of a fan base that came together on a drizzly afternoon to celebrate the Huskies’ Big East opener.
“When the AD gives you a ticket, you’ve got to come,” said Sullivan, 46, a 1998 UConn graduate.
So he came, arriving by red-eye to become one of the first on the scene. Sullivan has had quite a week. Part of his home was demolished Wednesday, when a 70 mph wind gust knocked down a massive tree in his yard and nearly killed his dog. By Thursday he was booking a flight and set to attend a game to which he was personally invited by athletic director David Benedict.
Sullivan sat in Benedict’s row of seats, just behind Jim Calhoun. He was one of 15,000-plus in attendance, the first sellout since the pandemic began, for the Huskies’ 57-53 loss that sucked some life out of the tail end of the experience. The building did vibrate with energy that hundreds of fans had lubricated on Pratt Street, where the Husky Ticket Project and the Hartford Chamber of Commerce collaborated for a block party.
People who are visible to many, but usually through a phone or computer screen, were suddenly together in the flesh, many double-fisting beers. It was around 4 p.m. when Mister Hot Balls, a man who describes himself online as “UConn basketball’s most embarrassing fan,” walked down Pratt with a beer in one hand, his 11-year-old daughter’s hand in the other and said, “Got to find Larry. We need to get a psychic reading done together. They’re doing it up the street.”
At that moment, the door to Vaughan’s swung open and a U-C-O-N-N chant taking place inside poured onto the street, overlapping with Christmas music. People huddled under awnings, some drinking nips of whiskey.
By 4 p.m., it was nearly frat-house rowdy. People milled about, beer can to lips, another sticking out of jacket pockets. The UConn fight song played. People hugged and laughed. By 4:30, most had walked up the block to the XL Center.
Shots of hot sauce had been thrown back, of course. That is UConn Twitter’s signature rallying action, a craze started last year by Bryan Jackson, a 2006 UConn graduate. He’s known by his Twitter handle, Penfield (his middle name).
“This is a real problem,” Jackson said upon arriving around 2:30. “I thought people might be like, ‘Oh, there’s Penfield, let’s buy him a beer.’ But people just want to drink hot sauce with me.”
Jackson was standing with Mister Hot Balls, who remains anonymous and is the great motivator and great curiosity of fans. He appears online, and in public, only while wearing a red and gold wrestling mask.
“I’m just here to be an idiot,” Hot Balls, who attended the game with his wife and two children, said while standing with Penfield. “I’m like a dashboard ornament.”
Penfield and Hot Balls attended a game last season at Gampel Pavilion as guests of Benedict.
“All fan bases have unique characters,” said Benedict, who spent over an hour at the party. “I would definitely say we have more than our share, which is fantastic. I can’t say I’m going to give a stamp of approval to everything they put out socially, but they have a good time and it’s all in very good fun.”
Benedict, Penfield and others took a ceremonial shot of hot sauce around 3:30 inside Hanging Hills Winter Garden, where a DJ played music, fans sipped hazy IPAs and a raffle was held. When Benedict left, he crossed paths with Sullivan and said “Let’s go, Big Arm!”
This has been the vibe on social media for a long time, with Jackson, Hot Balls and Sullivan among the ringleaders.
“To see the athletic department let their hair down and start to leverage it — they’ve done a good job balancing it and you’re starting to see the fruits of it all,” Hot Balls said. “There’s a lot of energy in the fan base. Now with fans in the arena and Big East basketball, it is a whole different enchilada.”
The hot sauce craze, a lava river of support for a program back on the rise, took on new meaning last season when the Husky Ticket Project, a 501(c)(3) non-profit started in 2018 by three UConn graduates, began seeking donations to match shots taken. The UConn Twitter conversation became about “#accountability,” and the Ticket Project has raised large sums of money to send thousands of children to sporting events.
Jackson said if the Ticket Project raised $120,000 on Saturday, he’d allow Hot Balls to shave his beard. Jackson still had a beard at tip-off.
“This is my 11th year on Twitter,” said Jackson, an XL Center season ticket holder who attended the game with his father and two brothers. “So we went through the highs and there were some lows that were pretty bad. There was a lot of logging off for the day. It’s good to be back. I think today is going to be one of the wildest scenes in a while.”
It was, even with Providence ultimately playing spoiler. The bars and streets were stuffed and packed like the arena. Was it the most responsible scene as the pandemic rages on with a new variant? No. Still, it was about a camaraderie in person that normally exists only in spirit — with one man flying across the country to participate.
Sullivan goes by BigLarryForearm in honor of his late father, also a UConn graduate.
“He never came into the dorm to pick me up,” Jackson said. “He would be in this blue caravan, just a looming figure, and he’d pull up, always had his window down and had his forearm hanging out. So people made this joke that they never saw my dad’s face, it was just Big Larry’s forearm.”
Sullivan grew up in Guilford and moved to Denver about 20 years ago. His father died while he was a senior at UConn. They had bonded over UConn basketball. Jackson has made significant donations to the Husky Ticket Project so children can attend games like he did with his dad.
Sullivan, who attended the Battle 4 Atlantis, also bought season tickets this year despite living in Colorado. He gives them away.
“I’m glad I’m in a situation where I can do that, and I only have a couple rules,” he said. “If you don’t go to the game, you’ve got to give the tickets to somebody, and you can’t sell them. Don’t be an ass. And send me a picture from the game.”
Sullivan had long ago given up his Saturday tickets. But he tweeted early in the week that he was considering flying to Connecticut, anyway, and Benedict responded by offering him a seat. So Sullivan booked the trip, worked until 10:30 p.m. Friday in Denver and arrived Saturday morning as one of the stars on the streets, eventually leading cheers in the arena.
“This is what makes college athletics crazy and it’s why people get so excited,” Benedict said. “They’re emotionally invested.”
[email protected]; @ManthonyHearst
source: https://www.ctinsider.com/uconn/article/Unique-characters-UConn-Twitter-shows-16713069.php
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