A little rain wasn’t going to stop Buckeyes fans from coming out to celebrate their favorite mascot’s 60th birthday.
Nearly 2,000 Ohio State fans gathered at Ohio State University’s Recreation and Physical Activity Center on Oct. 29 for Brutus Buckeye’s birthday party.
The event was not just a party; it was also a high-stakes contest. That’s because attendees were attempting to break a Guinness World Record for the largest gathering of people wearing conical party hats.
That’s conical hats, as in birthday hats. Not comical hats, which Matt Couch, the evening’s emcee and Ohio State’s associate dean of students, told the crowd.
The birthday party was originally going to be held inside Ohio Stadium, but the drizzly forecast called for moving the event to the Tom W. Davis Gym inside the RPAC.
Students and community members, many of whom were dressed in scarlet and gray, started lining up outside the RPAC at 5 p.m., an hour before the party would officially begin. Twenty-seven squares roped off with yellow tape sectioned the gym’s floor. Each of the squares held 100 people, and volunteers handed out specially printed conical hats emblazoned with Brutus’ face once they were full.
There were a few official rules that participants needed to follow in order to break the Guinness record. One, the hat must be on top of your head. Two, the hat’s thin elastic strap must be under your chin. And three, everyone must keep their hats on for a 60-second count.
Anyone spotted without their hat in the proper position would count as a one-person deduction.
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“I know you’re all national champions, but are you ready to be world record holders?” said Guinness World Record Adjudicator Chloe McCarthy as the official count was about to begin.
McCarthy shared that this specific world record is particularly contested, having already been broken four previous times. The current world-record holder is the Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls in Sutton Coldfield, United Kingdom, which broke the record in 2019 with 1,161 people in conical hats.
Before the official count began, McCarthy told the crowd that she felt confident that they had almost certainly beat the record.
“Buckeye Nation, you showed up, you showed out and I can confidently say you broke the world record,” McCathy said to booming cheers from the crowd.
And broke it they did. McCarthy said the official record-breaking count was 1,924 people, well over the needed threshold. (Several therapy dogs were also present, some of whom wore conical hats but were not included in the official count.)
After the count, Couch took attendees on a walk down memory lane, showing off some of the birthday boy’s previous looks. Some of the costumes on display included “Grandpa Brutus” — a 50-pound fiberglass nut costume that was one of Brutus’ first iterations — and “Strawberry Brutus,” a red-and-green dress-like costume that only lasted one season in the 1980s.
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Couch gave a shoutout to a few campus groups that showed out in force. Morrill Tower, he said, had the most students present of any residence hall.
Freshmen Peter Wilkens and George Bradbury were two residents who made the short trek over from their dorm to the RPAC for the party.
Brutus, they both said, was worth celebrating.
“I love Brutus, why wouldn’t I be here?” Wilkens said.
“Brutus is the best mascot of all time,” Bradbury said. “No, he’s the greatest athlete of all time. Tom Brady, LeBron James, Saquon Barkley, Brutus Buckeye. No other mascot puts up numbers like Brutus does.”
Students weren’t the only Brutus fans to show up for his birthday.
Seven-year-old Emmett Pi came to the party with his siblings — Judah, Nora and Josie — and his parents, Michael and Ashley. Emmett drew a picture at school earlier that day of him and Brutus playing together, which he had the chance to give to his favorite mascot.
Meeting Brutus was his favorite part of the day, Emmett said. His second favorite was getting one of the birthday cupcakes given to participants after the count.
Higher education reporter Sheridan Hendrix can be reached at shendrix@dispatch.com and on Signal at @sheridan.120. You can follow her on Instagram at @sheridanwrites.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio State fans set a Guinness World Record celebrating Brutus Buckeye’s 60th birthday
Reporting by Sheridan Hendrix, Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
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