Dotting the Buckeye: Remember when Rufus the Bobcat came for Brutus?

It wasn’t the first time two college-aged men had traded punches on a Saturday without particularly good or deep reason, and it wasn’t the first time such a squabble had taken place without either combatant getting a good look at the man he was trying to pummel. But it was almost certainly the first time such an event took place with 100,000 fans in attendance and with more than 100 college football players running behind, most of them focused on a grand entrance and a pregame prayer.

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From pictures and video, few of the Ohio State players taking the field a few minutes before kickoff on Sept. 18, 2010, seemed to notice or care that Brutus Buckeye, the famous Ohio State mascot, engaged in three separate tussles with Ohio University’s less-famous Rufus the Bobcat.

At the time, few knew that 20 seconds worth of wild swings and attempted wrestling moves between the mascots were anything other than playful capering. No one knew that the incident would live in mascot infamy 10 minutes later, let alone 10 years later.

Brandon Hanning went to Columbus that day with his Rufus costume and two goals: To “beat up” Brutus Buckeye and to get on the Comedy Central show “Tosh.0” for his efforts. Hanning admitted feeling a mix of nerves and urgency in the moments leading up to Ohio State’s grand entrance, as Brutus and the Ohio State cheerleaders sprinted out of the tunnel.

“It was getting real. It was gonna be now or never,” Hanning said. “So I wandered away from where I was supposed to be, and then I just ran at him.”

For Sean Stazen, the man in the Brutus costume for the morning pregame activities and the first half of the game, it had been Saturday morning business as usual. Pose for pictures. High-five kids. Sprint from the tunnel alongside the cheerleader holding the gigantic Ohio State flag. Then, there was a collision. And a stiff-arm. And then, a wrestling match.

For The Athletic’s Mascot Week, this is the story of the Rufus-Brutus brouhaha. This is the story of the Ohio University mascot who wasn’t even an Ohio University student.

Hanning: Literally, the sole purpose of me doing the mascot thing was to tackle Brutus Buckeye. I grew up in Southeast Ohio, maybe 10 minutes from Ohio University, and I just didn’t like Ohio State. In 2008, Ohio University played at Ohio State, and I was watching the game with friends and I told them I wanted to beat up Brutus Buckeye. I don’t know if I was serious or not, or if anybody even remembers that, but I said it. So maybe a little after that, I had seen the Oregon mascot on TV wrestling with another mascot, and I just was like, “I’m doing it.” So (in 2009), I was going to Ohio University and I found out there was another OU-OSU game in Columbus the next year, and I tried out to be the mascot. Like, it was fun at first. It got a little tedious. But I went through with it because I knew (in 2010) I was gonna get a shot at Brutus.

Stazen: The band plays, we run out, and out of the corner of my eye on the sidelines, I see Rufus and I’m like, “Oh, that’s weird.” And then I notice he’s running at me and I’m like, “Oh he’s trying to mess up our entrance. This is happening.” So, and you can kind of see this as you watch the video … I still hold on the flag, (but) I kind of lower my shoulder, brace for impact and we hit, and I’m able to get my left arm on top of him and I just throw him down as hard as I can.

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So he goes down to the ground and his mascot head actually pops off. So when I turn around there, the last thing I see is he’s on the ground and his head’s off. So my thought process at that point is that’s the end of it. So I kind of keep jogging my way toward the end zone and, you know, going about the rest of the entrance here, and all of a sudden, I feel someone stuff on my back and I’m like, “You gotta be kidding me.” Like, what is this guy doing? It wasn’t really like anger or a fight-or-flight reaction. It was just like more of an annoyance, like “Dude, what are you doing?” So I kind of sell it a little bit … there we are, kind of teetering around, (but) I’m also thinking, “How am I gonna get him off of me?”

Hanning: My head definitely fell off. Brutus is running beside that flag runner and I’m all amped up, so I guess I kind of lunged and tried to tackle two people. I got up and got the head back on, but not all the way — or at least not the right way. So it’s sort of like a movie from there because it’s just this sea of red. I’m looking for Brutus, but all I see is red, probably people in the stands wearing red. I had no idea till later so many of the players were so close because my adrenaline is going and I can’t let it end like that.

Jason Corriher, Ohio University’s director of athletic communications: I had my back to the field. I was up in the pressbox having a conversation with Jason Arkley, one of the beat writers, about just regular, random stuff. And Jason looked over my shoulder and said, “Oh, there are the two mascots rumbling around down there in the end zone,” so I looked. None of the Ohio State players or cheerleaders even looked over there. I did not think one more thing about it, and we just continued our conversation.

Jason Arkley, Ohio University beat writer, Athens Messenger: Looking back, it’s more a TV thing. I saw it live — at least some of it — but I’m not sure a lot of people did. It’s Ohio Stadium, so it’s, what, 100,000 people? I’d guess not many of those 100,000 saw it until later. I looked down and saw what I guess now is the second collision — Rufus on a full sprint going after Brutus. But at the time, I thought it was just shenanigans. Mascots do that stuff, right? Only later was it like, “Oh, this is something more.”

Stazen: I couldn’t really flip him over because he could have grabbed my head. Brutus getting beheaded in Ohio Stadium, that wouldn’t have been great. So we kind of fell to the ground and I just laid there. Then as I’m getting up, he kind of comes around the side and punches me. He sideswipes and punches me in the mascot head face, and that’s kind of like the typical picture you see. I was on one knee kind of getting up. But the picture where I knock his head off, I still have that on my phone. So he got his shots in later, but I got him first.

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Hanning: Because I couldn’t really see, I just locked on to what I could see of him, and then I guess I lunged. I mean, I guess I was lucky nobody came to break it up or whatever, but once I got my hands on him, I just figured let’s have some fun. In all the rush it was partly a blur. I just remember a couple guys came and kind of escorted me away, but they didn’t kick me out. They just took me over the sideline where I was supposed to be. One of them said, “Don’t touch Brutus again,” but that was about it.

Stazen: I think it was one of the assistant cheerleading coaches who came over and escorted him away shortly after, and I never saw him after that. Never talked to him. I changed at halftime because my shift was over, and I thought the whole thing was over.

Hanning: Honestly, not personal. I don’t think I ever even found out who it was because there are four or five people who wear the Brutus costume. I just wanted the guy to come out and go on TV with me to talk about it. We never made it on Tosh.0, which was probably the only thing disappointing about it.

Corriher: While it wasn’t a big deal in the press box, it became pretty clear to me quickly that there had been plenty of people asking how this happened, why this happened. The (Ohio) athletic director, Jim Schaus, was not happy. It was also pretty clear that the school president, Dr. Roderick McDavis, was, as you might imagine, very unhappy. We put out a statement the next day, I think. Ohio media hit the story pretty hard, and Monday I think it kind of went national, and I just kept forwarding that statement. Maybe that’s why you see it so many places. I just kept hitting forward over and over. So by Tuesday, it had run its course a little bit. But then once the national media had gotten ahold of Mr. Hanning, they then realized he wasn’t an Ohio University student. As you might imagine, from that point, it became a pretty difficult fact for us to defend. At that point we turtled, you might say, and went into a no-comment phase.

Arkley: There was no Rufus mascot showing up anywhere for a while, probably a number of weeks. Two or three different people were Rufus, but for a while, they were all shut down. That was a long time ago and I don’t remember a ton of details, but I know it was considered embarrassing for Ohio University. How do you answer for your mascot not being a student? I guess now I’d frame it as “uncomfortable.” It was something that, from Ohio University’s standpoint, couldn’t go away quickly enough.

Hanning: Would I handle anything differently now? I don’t think so. I don’t think it could have gone any better. I had just made the decision to drop out of school and no longer attend Ohio University maybe 10 days earlier, so the timing ended up being convenient. The Ohio University administration was really mad at me, but they couldn’t punish me.

Hanning had planned a hit-and-run, but he didn’t plan the latter part well. He’d come to Columbus with the Ohio University cheerleaders and figured the tackle would end his tenure as Rufus. But he didn’t have another way back to Southeast Ohio, and at the time no one knew he wasn’t a student. So he spent the game as Rufus. 

Hanning: They made me hang around. I guess they forced me to stay, so that was my punishment. It was really hot in that costume and I was down on that field all day. I don’t really remember how the rest of the day played out, to be honest with you, but I just remember wanting to get it over with. I never knew lawyers called Brutus or anything like that. I wanted to turn in the costume and just move on. When we got back (to Athens), I remember thinking I’d gotten lucky. Somebody left a door open inside the Convocation Center (where most of the athletic offices are housed), and I just threw the costume in some office. That was it. I probably went out and celebrated and had no idea all the attention that was gonna come. I went there to tackle Brutus and I tackled Brutus.

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Stazen: I think the next day I had to talk to some higher-up in the university, just making sure I was OK and all that. Then after that is when everything started coming out where, you know, he wasn’t even a student, this whole reason he tried out to be the Bobcat was because he knew they were playing Ohio State and he wanted to tackle Brutus. I can’t give you an exact timeline because it was so long ago, but I absolutely remember this crazy whirlwind for a week or two (where) you were seeing it on ESPN and CNN and all over. It was 2010, so it was right when social media was starting to really take off. It’s all over Facebook. It’s all over Twitter.

Your colleague, Zack Meisel, was a (student writer) at the time, and he was trying to reach out to me to get a statement as to what happened because at that time it was kind of easy to figure out who each Brutus was. I also had attorneys calling me that week. I had five attorneys call or reach out and like a Facebook message to me to see if I wanted to press charges for assault against him. I didn’t. I thought that was weird. It was just part of … the whole thing taking on a life of its own.

Zack Meisel, sports editor for The Lantern, Ohio State’s student newspaper (now a reporter for The Athletic): (The whole story) was one of those things where at first it was like, “OK, this was strange.” Or, “This was funny.” Then it comes out that this was some plan cooked up for years, and all of a sudden we’re writing mascot stories instead of football stories the next week. But I remember that Ohio State wouldn’t let Sean do interviews. We tried, but the answer was no. I found in my e-mail a line I wrote for a student newscast that said: “We never heard from the man beneath the giant nut for a head.” He wasn’t allowed to talk, but Sean did post a photo on his Facebook page of Brutus standing over a fallen Rufus and (Stazen) wrote: “That’s what happens when a boy messes with a man.”

The whole thing was brought up to (then-Ohio State coach) Jim Tressel in his midweek press conference. He said Brutus was listed as probable for the next game.

Tressel called the mascot dust-up “a different one” and said he was unaware of the incident until after the game. 

“I didn’t hear much about it, and then I was alerted to the fact that why the fellow tried out, I guess, was to get a shot at Brutus,” Tressel said. “I saw Brutus over at the Block O event last night and asked him if he was going to be ready for Saturday, and he’s probable from an injury-report standpoint.”

The game, not that you really were wondering, ended with the home team winning 43-7. 

“Obviously, we needed to tackle the guy with the ball, not the mascot,” Ohio coach Frank Solich said in his postgame press conference. 

Hanning: It just caught fire. Monday probably, my Facebook just exploded. My messages, friend requests, they just maxed out. I know I did a lot of media interviews, but now it’s not the media calls that stick out. It was the messages from Oregon, Michigan, California … really everywhere, people who just hated Ohio State who were telling me I was a hero. I actually had a restaurant in Michigan message me and ask for my address. They sent me this huge picture of me punching Brutus and asked me to sign it and send it back so they could hang it up in the restaurant.

Corriher: We had several national media outlets that called and my answer was the same, “Just read our statement.” Sports Illustrated wrote a story. We got calls and emails from all over the country. That was the only time I ever cracked, you might say. By the time we got to Wednesday, I ended up on the phone with a Columbus morning-show host. I do not remember her name. But she was giving me the third degree on how we let this individual be our mascot and what a mess this was. I wasn’t rude, I didn’t call her any names, but I just hung up on her. That’s the only time I’ve ever done that.

Stazen: We’re anonymous when we’re not in costume, which is totally fine. Then one day I’m sitting there on my couch in my apartment on campus doing homework and Bill Simmons and Tony Kornheiser are talking about me on “Pardon The Interruption.” I was just, like, in disbelief.

Corriher: I remember the New York Times ran their story, and once they talked to Brandon and kind of figured out his plans — that he only tried out in 2009 because he knew we were going up there (to Columbus), and he wanted to do this in 2010 — (it became a bigger deal). So the New York Times headline called it a Machiavellian plot. I remember just kind of freezing as I read that. I’ll never forget that. It still comes up on Google. As long as I live, I’ll always remember it being called a Machiavellian plot.

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Hanning: I actually fought the Buffalo Bull mascot the year before. It’s on YouTube, too, but nobody saw it or nobody remembers it because it wasn’t in front of 100,000 people at Ohio State. I held this red cape thing in front of the bull, and then I pulled it away. I tackled him and held him on the ground. It was hilarious, and actually I think that got me promoted. Like, after that, they started taking me to the bigger games. So after that, I figured I was gonna get my shot at Brutus, and it was just a matter of making that happen.

Corriher: It was embarrassing, and we said that in the statement. We were embarrassed. But I have to tell you, there were some people in our department who were like “Come on, this is not that big a deal.” They were kind of snickering. I work at Marshall University now, and a number of years later I went back (to Ohio University) and went to visit some of my old buddies. There was a coach who had that picture of Brandon punching Brutus with a caption that said, “I just dotted your I.” I won’t say any names, but it was on his desk. Now we know them as internet memes, right? That, to me, was the first meme.

Stazen: I did other things as Brutus that I’ll never forget. I grew up as an Ohio State and Northeast Ohio sports fan. My dad went to Ohio State. (As Brutus) I was there on the field or court for big wins. I was on the field as Ohio Stadium was rocking … the Michigan game and (other) just unforgettable stuff. Being caught as Brutus overreacting to a play by the TV cameras, and throwing out the first pitch at a Reds-Indians game, and the times I went to the hospital as Brutus and you brighten some kid’s day, that’s the stuff that will be with me forever.

Being the guy who was in the mascot fight that everybody’s seen on YouTube? That’s fine, too. I laughed then, and here we are 10 years later still talking about it. It wasn’t personal. (Hanning) just was going to do this and anyone who was in the Brutus costume was going to be on the other end of it. I just happened to be in the costume at that time.

Hanning: There were a few Ohio U fans in the tiny corner of that stadium where the visiting fans sit who knew (I was going after Brutus). Some people back in Southeast Ohio knew — friends from home, just people I’d talk with or hang with — for a long time that I was only the Bobcat mascot so I could tackle Brutus. So, some people knew it was in the works. But nobody knew when I was gonna do it. And I’m not mad at any of my friends in the stands for not taping it, but they just weren’t ready. Like, it happened fast and they didn’t have their phones ready. That’s fine. It ended up on YouTube, and it ended up everywhere on Facebook. That’s honestly when it gets brought up, every September. I don’t know the exact date, but it’s always on Facebook Memories, so every year, we all have a laugh about it.

Stazen: When you watch it, it’s pretty hilarious. Anything involving mascots is typically pretty funny. But yeah, it’s just kind of a crazy funny, a story that’ll kind of be with me forever.

Meisel: Unfortunately, all The Lantern archives are gone, but I can tell you I remember trying to chase down (Stazen) for the story. I vaguely remember going back and forth with Sean one night to try to get his perspective in a story for the next day, and then at maybe 10 p.m. after I thought he was ghosting us, he finally emailed to say he appreciated the effort but wasn’t allowed to talk. Ohio State wouldn’t let him talk. So our headline ended up being: “Brutus can’t break silence about Bobcat brawl.”

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Stazen: Honestly, this is the first time I’ve talked about it publicly to a reporter. I had a lot of requests at the time, I do remember that. But you know, Ohio State was very adamant at that time that I did not talk about it with the press. I have talked about it. I work in sales now here in Columbus, so it comes up that I was Brutus. And Ohio U alums, the first thing they generally ask about is that day. But it’s been just jokes or personal anecdotes. I’m glad to talk about it. I laugh. No hard feelings about it. Like I said, I didn’t talk to him that day at all. I never have. If I did, we’d have a good laugh about it. As long as we’re clear that I threw him down first, let the story live on.

(Photo: Aaron Josefczyk / Icon SMI / Icon Sport Media via Getty Images)

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