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The thread appeared at 8:01 p.m. on a Thursday. "CLEMSON BANNER(S) LINK," it read. The poster called himself OzarCaneSaw, a member of the message board WestEndZone.com and organizer of its righteous and pissed-off horde. His link led fellow Miami fans to a GoFundMe page, which asked for $585. The money would pay for an airplane, and the airplane would carry a banner, and the banner would broadcast another variation of the same idea OzarCaneSaw and his crew had been sending all season. The message had appeared on six game days, 1,500 feet above the Canes at various stadiums, a public proclamation of their simple and singular dream.
Alfred James Golden Jr. was the head football coach at the University of Miami. They would prefer he be unemployed.
They were close. They knew it. The Hurricanes had just lost two straight. Calls for Golden's head had filtered inward from the fringe. Influential bloggers wanted him gone. So did former players. Like every banner week before, once OzarCaneSaw and the message boarders raised the money, they would finalize their ideas. They were groping toward the past, flying to resurrect a version of their team and of themselves that they feared might never return.
"Burn the s--- down fellas, if need be," OzarCaneSaw wrote. "Burn it down."
Their banners had precedent. Four decades after the Wright brothers took flight, a man named Arnold Butler founded Aerial Sign Co. in the mid-1940s and began delivering messages attached to planes. If you knew when and where a mass of humans would gather, all you had to do was make a call and a payment and watch your words fly. You could sell insurance over the beach or say "happy birthday" above the state fair. The FCC regulated messages on television or radio, and print media came with their own sets of restrictions. No one, however, controlled who said what across the sky.
By the 1960s, football fans had begun using aerial banners the same way they've used most every other form of communication: to demand that coaches lose their jobs. Before former Ohio State coach Woody Hayes became a legend, fans in the 1960s flew banners saying, "Good-Bye, Woody!" In 1978, New York Giants fans vented by air about John McVay, the latest in a string of mediocre hirings. ("15 years of lousy football. We've had enough.") And in 1997, an earlier generation of Miami fans flew their own banner in opposition to then-coach Butch Davis. "From national champs to national chumps. Thanks, Butch."
Those banners were scattered and isolated, each one a big enough deal that it became part of a team's lore. Not anymore. Now banners fly at home and on the road, at practices and tailgates. They aim to oust athletic directors at minnows such as North Texas ("Fire Rick Villarreal") and at behemoths such as Texas ("[Steve] Patterson must go"). Last year, New York Jets fans flew a banner in opposition to their general manager. This year, they flew one just to call the New England Patriots cheaters. San Francisco fans believed their team's issues went all the way to the top, so they politely targeted the CEO: "Jed York & 49ers should mutually part ways."
It's unclear how many anti-coach banners fly each year -- aerial advertising companies say they account for a tiny fraction of overall business -- but the Internet seems to have made funding and flying them much easier. Obsessives flock to message boards and, in turn, fuel their own anger and nerve. Sites such as PayPal and GoFundMe allow the rabid to organize anonymously. Where once you needed to track down enough like-minded friends with venom and cash to spare, now you only have to post a link to a fundraising site and your brothers-up-in-arms will come to you. The organization might be digital, but the loudest shouting is analog.
No fan base, regardless of era, had ever orchestrated a banner-flying effort as concentrated and sustained as Miami's against Al Golden. Message boarders flew their first anti-Golden banner before a home game against Cincinnati last year: "Fire Al Golden. Save the U." By now, they were flying the banners almost every week. Some were hopeful (if forgetful): "Make Miami great again -- Butch Davis 2016." Others were despondent: "C'mon, #FireAlGolden. These banners are getting expensive." Still, others showed the depths of their resolve. "I flew 1,124 miles," the banner read before a road game at Cincinnati this season, "just to say, #FireAlGolden." The Miami Herald called them "patriotically treasonous." Fans faced little dissent, though, inside their online forum, where they attributed no names to their ideas, only handles: The Wolf, BozCane, WhatTheHell. Twenty-one people donated to pay for the banner they planned to fly for the Clemson game.
Since the start of the season, roughly 120 had donated in all. Before each game, they took a poll. One of this week's options referred to Golden's former job: "5 Years Later, Temple Is Ranked, Miami Is Not." Another referenced this week's opponent: "Dabo: Finish him #FireAlGolden." They debated ideas and cast votes, but ultimately, this was OzarCaneSaw's decision. He'd organized their efforts, so they trusted him to send their message. Three days before kickoff, he made his choice. He picked up the phone.