The NC State football team took on Tennessee on Sept. 7, at the Duke’s Mayo Classic. Things did not look good going into the Mayo Classic as Tennessee ranked in the top 15 during the preseason while NC State was 24th. The game ended in a 10-51 loss for the Wolfpack. Unfortunately, that loss wasn’t the worst thing that happened during the game.

From beginning to end Tennessee fans were berating, heckling and throwing slurs at pretty much anything in red and white, but most of it was directed towards members of the NC State Marching Band.

First, let me be very clear about a few things. Number one: It was not all of the Tennessee fans who were engaging in this behavior. It was primarily the Tennessee section closest to the band section and the field. Number two: I am sure that the NC State fans said some horrible things as well. I am just speaking from the perspective of the NC State Marching Band.

Heckling is something you get used to after being around the sports scene for a while. Especially as an athlete, cheerleader, member of the band or any other organization closely associated with the sports team. Anyone who has been to an NC State – UNC game has seen some pretty intense rivalry and heard some horrible things. But nothing could prepare you to hear the things that the Tennessee fans said at the Mayo Classic.

The first story that I have is also the worst. Jonathan Durham, a tenor saxophone player, recounted what he faced:

“As we were walking out from the stands for pregame, we were just walking by and there were a couple Tennessee fans shouting some infamous things. Things like the N-word, things like – fans that were not black might I add – shouting the N-word, different slurs. Slurs that you’ve probably never even heard before in this decade. One thing that I was personally called, like up close, was a crow, which is in relation to the Jim Crow laws. So that’s some like 1960’s racism.”

I asked Durham if he thought that the fans were specifically targeting people of color in the band and he responded with this:

“I would say that those specific comments were pointed at people in the band of color, but separately I’ve heard on some occasions that different people were called the F-slur, just called gay in general… like it was a bad thing. They used it as a slur.”

This became a recurring issue throughout all of the stories that I heard from other band members. People were called all variants of derogatory terms in reference to being gay.

I then talked with Gattis Smith II-McNeill who plays trumpet. He said, “I couldn’t even go to the bathroom without being called the F-slur. When we were leaving the game this one Tennessee fan kept calling us inappropriate names and as we all were ignoring them he pushed me and called me the F-slur.”

From what Smith II-McNeill told me, it seems like the Tennessee fans were not only verbally berating the NC State Marching band, but also using physical aggression.

Lastly, I talked to Kyle Scavo, a sousaphone player and Caitlin Potter, a piccolo player. Scavo started off the conversation, giving a rundown of his entire experience:

“At the end of the game we had a Tennessee fan that came and shoved his camera up in my face and about three other people’s faces recording, screaming rocky top and flipping us off. The second one was that some of the Tennessee band members were coming up and doing the wolf down thing, like “Texas Hook ‘em Horns” down but the NC State version, on the field and were shoving me and Manny (another sousaphone player) during halftime. They were physically pushing us off the field because we were in their way, apparently.”

For those of you who do not know what “Texas Hook ‘em Horns” is, let me briefly explain that for you. The University of Texas Longhorns have a hand signal much like the NC State wolfie, called the “Hook ‘em Horns.” In the SEC it became a huge issue because both fans and players of the opposing team would take the horns and turn it upside down as a taunting gesture, using it as a way to demean the Longhorns.

It became an incredibly disrespectful gesture, to the point where the SEC had to start enforcing a penalty around it. It has been adopted by fans all throughout college sports so now we have things like “wolfie down.”

Scavo followed up with, “They booed at the piccolos and other sections and yelled at us the entire time.” I asked him if he was referring to the Tennessee fans or the band members, to which he said it was the band. Potter then interjected saying, “In front of their band director too. Their band director did nothing.”

As a member of the marching band, unable to attend the bowl game, I heard stories from nearly every single member of the band. Without fail, every person I talked to had some sort of negative interaction with Tennessee fans.

I talked to a friend from Tennessee who was also present at the game, but she said that she was unaware of the situation. She had been sitting higher up in the stadium and said that the fans up there were not making any comments of that kind. So, as I said earlier, it is clear that not all of the Tennessee fans are like the people mentioned in the stories above. But regardless of whether or not all of the fans were engaging in that behavior, the ones who did were the ones that the band will remember.

The Tennessee fan base represented the University of Tennessee, covered in orange and white clothing, shouting “Go Vols” and singing the fight song. It’s a shame that they had to represent their team with racism, homophobia and just outright disrespect aimed at people who were just doing their job. They tainted their otherwise overwhelming victory with hatred.

In the end it is just a game, these are just college kids playing instruments and the fans are just people watching football. It’s really not that deep.