It’s a cold Saturday night in March 2006, and the clock is ticking down until the Syracuse Orange face off against Villanova University. Three Syracuse University students sit together on the steps of the Carrier Dome, trying to stay warm while suffering from sickness. Suddenly, an order of about 100 tacos arrives to feed the hungry basketball diehards.

The man delivering them is 6’9” Syracuse basketball forward Terrence Roberts. After many months of hard work, this was perhaps the best validation for the once-fledgling student section that these three friends — Bobby Patrick, Sean Hyland and Menotti Minutillo — founded.

The group had been struggling to convince SU officials that their organization, Otto’s Army, was legitimate, and they were determined to outlast the freezing temperatures.

Now 10 years later, Otto’s Army has cemented itself as the official student section of SU — one that the university’s 20,000-plus students are automatically made members of from freshman year to graduation. When the Orange take the floor against the Florida State University Seminoles on Thursday, the group will pay tribute to its humble beginnings with a performance of “Happy Birthday” by the Sour Sitrus Society and a commemorative video.

Otto’s Army originated as an idea between the three friends — now SU alumni — who met their freshman year and instantly bonded over a shared passion for SU sports. They would camp out together before basketball games and arrive at football games six hours early to get front row seats. Although their love of SU sports was undying, they felt that the system for entering the Dome was inefficient.

Every time the Dome’s doors opened for a game, a near free-for-all of students would storm the entrance. The trio knew this wasn’t the best system to fill up the student section.

“They would open the gates, we would cross the turnstile, and we would have to sprint to the other side of the Dome to get good seats,” Hyland said.

If Dome employees couldn’t swipe students’ IDs and give them an armband fast enough, students risked getting a bad seat in the student section. This made the group want to devise a list that would allow for those waiting the longest to get the first shot at choosing seats.

At first, both the Carrier Dome and the university were not on board with the idea of Otto’s Army because it encouraged students to camp outside in the cold. Fortunately, they said, Hyland and Minutillo had connections to the Student Association, which afforded them a legitimate platform through which they could push their ideas.

But before they got permission to go through with Otto’s Army, they had to zero in on a name for the organization. In 2005, the trio’s sophomore year, SU sent out a poll to the student body asking them to choose from a list of names.

To the dismay of the group, The Juice Box won the poll. In the group’s eyes, the name didn’t fit because it connoted just a student section, rather than an organization. They decided to go with another option on the poll — Otto’s Army.

The trio then began to create a formal list of rules for Otto’s Army members. They first decided to admit every SU student as an automatic member of the group and continued from there.

When Johnny Oliver came to SU, his sights were set on becoming the freshman ambassador for Otto’s Army. He didn’t end up getting the position, but now, the junior broadcast and digital journalism major is vice president of Otto’s Army.

Oliver said his expectations of the experience have been surpassed in many ways. During his freshman year, Oliver camped outside of the Dome on his birthday in anticipation of the Syracuse–Duke game. From campout to tip off, they waited for 12 hours, but what made it fun were the people of Boeheimburg.

“The entire process would have absolutely sucked if I hadn’t had people there camping with me,” Oliver said.

After 10 years, Hyland said it never gets old watching Otto’s Army flash on screen during an ESPN broadcast. Back when they first started camping out, it was a privilege to be invited in to use the bathroom in the Dome. But now, seeing the group on national TV is commonplace and Otto’s Army is a household name among the SU community.

“I’m most proud of the fact that it didn’t end up dying when we left,” Minutillo said. “It made enough impact and people believed in it.”

While the founding members of Otto’s Army have now left The Hill, they said they’re impressed by the organization’s reach into other sports, such as soccer and lacrosse, and the charity work that has been done.

“Those were all things that we wanted to do and things that we talked about doing, but they were tough to do in the organization’s infancy,” Minutillo said. “But now, to see them come to fruition is awesome.”

Published on February 9, 2016 at 9:28 pm

Contact: slgozins@syr.edu