Anyone watching ESPN’s College GameDay on Saturday morning couldn’t miss it.
There was Pat McAfee, running around like a caffeinated golden retriever with the zoomies before Ole Miss freshman James Whitehead drilled a 33-yard field goal in the weekly pregame fan contest to win $1 million. Behind McAfee, on display for the entire college football-loving nation to see, was that a University of Maine flag?
In Oxford, Mississippi?
What in the name of Paul Kariya was going on?
That was all Chance Brooks. The 21-year old Jay native is one of the biggest Louisiana State University football fans in New England. That was Brooks in the combination LSU-Cincinnati Bengals Joe Burrow jersey accepting a compliment from ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit right before the talking head held the ball for Whitehead’s kick.
Since former Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin bolted for LSU just before the Rebels were set to compete in the College Football Playoff last season, this game had been circled by fans of both teams. With so much hype surrounding the game, Brooks thought, why not go?
“Why not spend a little money and go down to the South and enjoy a little good football?” Brooks said Sunday afternoon as he made his way back to Maine from Memphis, a short 1-hour and 15-minute drive from Oxford, where he made his headquarters for the trip.
Brooks, who works at ND Paper in Rumford, spent $650 on his ticket to the game, where he sat in the corner of the end zone near LSU’s tunnel, seven rows from the field. While it didn’t turn out the way he hoped — Ole Miss won 30-24 on Saturday night — it was money well spent.
“At the end of the day, I’m glad it was a close game,” he said.
Chance comes by his passion for LSU football honestly. He was born into it. His great-grandparents, Tom and Mona Linder, were originally from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and attended LSU. Tom took a job at a paper mill in Moss Point, Mississippi, and a promotion brought the family to Jay.
Curtis Brooks, Chance’s father, remembers his grandfather’s love for LSU football well. When it was time for those Saturday night kickoffs, Tom Linder would go out to his car and place a piece of tinfoil on the top of the antenna to give the reception a little boost. Then he’d sit in the car and listen to a faraway station give him the play-by-play.
“You would see his car move up and down the driveway as radio reception would go in and out,” Curtis Brooks said.
As he planned the trip, Chance knew he’d pack the UMaine flag and try to support his other sports love, Black Bears hockey. Curtis is a longtime season-ticket holder. His aunt, Paula Linder, worked in sports medicine at UMaine and stoked the Black Bears fandom he passed on to his son.
Father and son have bonded for years making the trip from Jay to Orono for games. They sit in Section G alongside friends from Jay who also make the pilgrimage for Black Bears hockey all winter.
How many times did young Chance curl up in the back seat in his pajamas on the drive home on a cold winter night? Curtis wishes he’d kept track of all the miles.
“Ever since I was little, I remember going up (to Orono). When I was growing up, Maine hadn’t been that good, but it was always a heck of time to go up to the Alfond and root on the Black Bears. There’s nothing like it in college hockey,” Chance said.
Curtis and Chance have been to Frozen Fenway when the ballpark hosted hockey games. They’ve been to Bruins’ Winter Classic games, including at Notre Dame stadium. They followed the Black Bears to Springfield, Massachusetts, for the NCAA tournament in 2024, and even went to Las Vegas for the Frozen Four last spring, even though Maine wasn’t participating. They plan to go to New York the Saturday after Thanksgiving to watch the Black Bears take on Cornell at Madison Square Garden.
“Hockey’s our thing. A lot of guys, they hunt. Him and I, hockey has been our bond,” Curtis Brooks said.
His son is an independent kid, Curtis said. It didn’t surprise him that, once he told Chance he couldn’t make the Mississippi trip work in his schedule, Chance went alone.
It also didn’t surprise Curtis when, working the overnight shift at ND Paper early Saturday morning, he got a text from Chance, announcing he was in line to “GameDay.” It was 3 a.m.
Chance said he got in line at 2 a.m., and estimated there were already around 500 people ahead of him. When ESPN started letting fans in at 5:30 a.m., most ran to stake out a spot behind the main stage, where the hosts would be for the bulk of the show. Chance made a line to where they’d do the field goal segment, and draped his flag.
“I was the only one sitting there for a while,” he said.
When McAfee started his nonsensical dance to fire up the crowd before Whitehead’s kick, there was Chance and his flag, front and center. How many people watching in Maine did a double take? Did anyone start singing the Stein Song?
Maine plays at the Football Championship Subdivision level. ESPN has taken “College GameDay” to an FCS campus just a dozen times since 2002, but not since going to Bozeman, Montana, for Montana vs. Montana State in 2022. It would likely take an act of the football gods for ESPN to do the show from Maine’s Alfond Stadium.
So Chance Brooks combined his two loves, LSU football and Maine hockey, and took the Black Bears to ESPN instead.