The brothers of Phi Gamma Delta and Pi Kappa Alpha will take a 187-mile run from Ann Arbor, Mich. to Columbus just in time to deliver the game ball to The 'Shoe on Saturday.
The brothers of FIJI and PIKE, who have carried on this tradition for the last five years, make the interstate run as a relay of sorts, with each runner carrying the ball to the next post down the long stretch.
"At about two o'clock on Friday morning the brothers of FIJI and PIKE are going to take the game ball and start running it," said Tony Gallenstein, a junior in molecular genetics and one of FIJI's event organizers. "One person will be running at a time carrying [the ball] on side streets from Michigan down to Columbus."
The Michigan brothers will hand off to their Ohio brethren at the half-way point in Findlay, Ohio.
The race is a collaboration among fraternity brothers in Ohio and Michigan to honor Richard Smudz, a FIJI brother from the class of 1975 who died of cancer in 2005.
"Smudz was one of our founders who helped bring us back on campus," said Greg Ebersole, a senior in material science and engineering and a FIJI cabinet member.
"He was diagnosed with cancer and ended up dying before the chapter was firmly re-established at Ohio State. He is one of the reasons why we do this for the American Cancer Society."
The Phi Gamma Delta chapter at OSU shut down in the late 1990s because of a lack of funding, but was re-established in 2002 with Richard Smudz as a major backer.
To inject rivalry into the run and further honor Smudz, the Michigan and Ohio chapters compete for donations which go to the American Cancer Society.
"There is a little rivalry on trying to raise more money but that is just a little friendly competition more than anything else," said Greg Ebersole, a senior in material science and engineering and a FIJI cabinet member.
The runners this year received $10,000 in corporate sponsors and have organized fundraising events from golf outings to frisbee tournaments.
"We started a bunch of new things to try to raise money," Gallenstein said."As of right now, we have raised about $8,000. I would anticipate $10,000 for Ohio State. That's over double what we raised last year."
Nearly every member from the four fraternity chapters will participate, totaling about 380 runners, Gallenstein predicts.
"One brother will run alongside the road and one car will drive alongside of them," Gallenstein said. "The others cars will be slightly behind or slightly in front of them."
Saturday, about 30 hours after the run begins, the ball will arrive in Columbus where the fraternities will present the ball twice.
"The first presentation will be at roughly 9:15 a.m. on Saturday at the Alumni Tailgate and we'll actually hand the game ball off to Archie Griffin," Gallenstein said."The second drop-off will happen at the Skull Session. We'll be handing the ball off to the assistant athletic director, who will personally take it to the field."
The rivalry run is one of the reasons John Drummond joined the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. The run is poignant to him because his uncle passed away from cancer.
"Cancer robbed my family … and hundreds of thousands of families have a story just like this, a loved one whose time with them was made all too brief by this dispicable disease," said Drummond, a sophomore in political science.
"It is for this reason that we who are left here must take up this burden, to fight and defeat cancer."
Despite the media-hyped rivalry between Ohio State and Michigan, the states' brethren embrace unity for the event.
"Ohio State doesn't really like Michigan but we're brothers and we team up for something that is more important than college football," Gallenstein said. "We joke around and we have friendly rivals with our brothers, but more than anything else we work as a team."
Tatum Shroyer can be reached at shroyer.50@osu.edu.
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