BATTLE OF BMOC : In a Flag Football Game to Determine CSUN’s Social Order, the Pikes Showed Muscle--the Pleasure Seekers Showed Up

It was high noon, the designated time for showdowns, shoot-outs and flag football games at Cal State Northridge. The fraternity champions were playing the independent champions for campus bragging rights. As rivalries go, this was a natural. The two groups disliked one another for all the right reasons. Each regarded its own life style as the ultimate in cool. The game would help decide which was the coolest.

In college, this is meaningful.

An hour before kickoff, Mike Mietz was drinking his pregame meal at the Pub, a hangout in the student union, and making sure his teammates were emotionally, mentally and spiritually ready. He ordered another pitcher.

Mietz understood his responsibility as quarterback, captain and principal organizer of the Pleasure Seekers, the independent team. Primarily, he buys the beer. He would schedule practice, but the Pleasure Seekers don’t practice. He would draw up plays, but his team doesn’t have any. Neither do they have uniforms, fight songs or cheerleaders.

“We just want to go out and have a good time when we play,” Mietz said, sipping a cold one.

It should be obvious to those who believe in sports cliches that the Pleasure Seekers didn’t get to the all-university championship game by being dedicated, disciplined and determined. Their name alone tips you off right away about their real goals in life. But talent has taken them a long way. Mietz recruited Northridge football dropouts, track stars like Shawn Denton and assorted jocks who share his belief that winning isn’t everything, partying is.

“We get by on natural ability,” he said. “We’re like the Stanford marching band. We’re good, but we look tacky. Fortunately, we win.”

But don’t get the idea that the championship game is something Mietz and his buddies take lightly. Cool takes on many forms. The Pleasure Seekers are cool because they make believe they don’t really care. But somewhere beneath their cool, feelings run deep.

“The biggest reason why every single guy on my team wants to play flag football is to get a chance to beat the hell out of the frats,” Mietz said. Of the nine football-playing fraternities at Northridge, the one the Pleasure Seekers would get the most pleasure out of beating is Pi Kappa Alpha, which happens to be their opponent this year.

What makes this championship game even more meaningful is the radically different philosophies of the two teams. While the Pleasure Seekers take a casual approach to their games, the Pikes (short for Pi Kappa Alpha) pursue a reputation as a sports-crazy fraternity that emphasizes organization, planning and commitment. The Pikes actually practice and scout the opposition. They also have real uniforms and numbered plays.

But worse, Mietz said incredulously, “They even have people yelling cheers on the sidelines.”

At Cal State Northridge, the Pikes are in the unique position of being hated not only by the independents but by the other fraternities as well. They are cool because they’re a campus sports dynasty, winning the intramural all-sports championship six of the past seven years. But the gung-ho attitude that contributes to their success also manages to irritate a lot of people.

“We’re pretty boisterous on campus,” said Adam Soibelman, the fraternity’s athletic director. “We do a lot of singing.”

In American sports mythology, nobody likes a perennial winner, especially one that sings. “The Pikes and the Phi Delts are the two top frats,” Mietz said, “but the Pikes are very controversial. You either love ‘em or hate ‘em, kind of like the Raiders. A lot of guys from the other fraternities have been coming up to me and saying, ‘You guys better beat the Pikes.’ Nobody is going to be rooting for them.”

And the Pikes say, isn’t that gratitude for you?

“When you think about it, it’s kind of funny,” said Soibelman, a junior majoring in criminology. “The independents come to our parties and drink our beer, then they say they don’t like us.”

It would be easy to dislike the Pikes if they were goody-goodies who drink plenty of milk, pamper their bodies and go to bed early. But they’re not the kind of guys who sit around in blue blazers singing the Wiffenpoo song. Their reputation for sports is exceeded only by their reputation for partying.

“The Pikes,” Mietz said with admiration, “like to raise a little hell.” Mietz used to go to Pike parties, but two years ago he raised a little too much hell himself and was banned from their house, thereafter missing a lot of great bashes.

The Pike house is a monument to sports and partying. Set on a barren lot on the corner of Halsted Street and Zelzah Avenue, painted a sedate orange-red and yellow, it overlooks a manicured volleyball court that’s next to something every high-tech frat house needs--a fire engine. An adjacent cinder block bunker contains a pool table and a stereo system that rock ‘n’ rolls at all hours. Between the bunker and a small cabin called the “Bar” is a basketball court.

Only eight of the 100 Pikes live in the main house. Somehow, despite a year and a half of abuse, it is still standing, perhaps because the major social blowouts spill over into the yard. But the house isn’t only used for parties. When they’re not cultivating their intellects, chanting their mantra or reading poetry, the brothers play foosball in the entrance hall or arcade-type video games in the living room and kitchen.

In the living room, trophies on the mantle attest to the Pikes’ athletic prowess. “But most of the good ones have been ripped off,” said Bill Gillinger, a sophomore quarterback majoring in engineering. The remaining trophies of importance are locked in a closet. They are displayed only during important fraternity events, like when a girl comes in the house.

The nucleus of the Pleasure Seekers played for Mietz last year as the Pocket Rockets. They won the all-university championship by beating Phi Delta Theta, 18-0. It may seem as if Mietz has an advantage over the Pikes because he can recruit his players from the entire college population. But during fraternity rush, the Pikes have as much opportunity as the independents to find exceptional athletes.

“Guys are attracted to pledge Pike because of our sports record,” Soibelman said. “But we don’t rush only athletes. We’ll pledge guys who aren’t athletic, but they’ll be on the sidelines rooting. We’ve definitely got the most spirited house on campus.”

Right before the game, Mark “Wally” Waldera, a high school quarterback from Dickinson, N. D., who plays lineman for the Pleasure Seekers, was tossing a football around the Pub. Waldera, along with Mietz, Denton and two other students, lives in a rented house called “The Pad,” which is only half a block away from the Pikes. As a graduate student in exercise physiology, Waldera makes his most important contribution to the team the morning after a game or a party.

“I take care of the hangovers,” he said.

Although Waldera admitted having “a few butterflies” minutes before the big game, the Pleasure Seekers typically put on a flip front, as though they really needed to reinforce their image. They also knew the Pikes were behaving like Pikes at that moment, rallying at the fraternity house, singing songs, ringing the bell on the fire engine, slapping backs and firing each other up.

“The Pikes are a little more serious than we are right now,” Waldera said, “but they’ve got more to lose than we do. The reputation of the fraternity is at stake. They take pride in that. We’re more relaxed, which is to our advantage.”

It was time to leave for the game. The Pleasure Seekers chugged their beers and straggled over to the field (not to straggle would be an admission of organization). The game was going to be played on the Music Field, which is on the southeast corner of the campus. The Pikes were already there, warming up. Mietz began throwing passes nonchalantly, his baseball cap turned backwards on his head as a symbol of uncaring coolness.

Mietz is a wiry athlete who played quarterback at Marina High in San Leandro and at Chabot Junior College in Hayward. A senior in physical education at Northridge, he misses the electricity of varsity tackle football, but the game against the Pikes certainly got the juices flowing again.

“It’s been a few years since I’ve been in a big game like this,” he said. “The last big one was in Bakersfield Stadium against Taft (junior college). People were booing us. This game today has the same kind of excitement for me.”

The Pikes got to the championship game with a 10-1 record and a 6-0 victory over the independent NADS in the semifinals. The Pleasure Seekers also were 10-1, which includes a 14-6 semifinal victory over the Phi Delts in what the student newspaper headlined as “the old brawl game.”

The rules of seven-man flag football are designed to keep the participants from putting one another in intensive care, but don’t think the game is for sissies. “People get beat up a lot,” said Soibelman.

When the game began, the student turnout was disappointing to Soibelman, who had predicted it would outdraw the university’s homecoming game the following night. But after finishing 11 a.m. midterms, about 500 students showed up shortly after kickoff, lining both sidelines two deep. The Pikes had their own cheering section (“Notice the spirit of camaraderie on this side,” quipped a Pike) and they had a lot to cheer about when their team scored on its first possession, Gillinger hitting Paul Bucceri with a 10-yard pass on a play they’d practiced since June. The conversion pass was knocked down.

Mietz came right back, throwing a 15-yard scoring pass to Eric Barnett, but the extra point was no good. As expected, the touchdown play was made up in the huddle.

“Usually, I call plays by saying ‘You do this’ or ‘You do that,’ ” Mietz said. “Sometimes, I just say, ‘Do whatever.’ ”

The game was tied at halftime and Mietz was shaking his head over his performance. “I’m playing like a jerk,” he said. “I can’t complete a sentence.”

Although Mietz got the Pleasure Seekers rolling in the second half, he couldn’t get them across the goal line. Meanwhile, Gillinger, a linebacker when he played at Kennedy High, was scrambling and passing for first downs, finally hitting Jeff (Catch) Cohen for a touchdown on a pass-run play of 22 yards. The extra-point pass to pledge Glen Brazier put the Pikes ahead, 13-6.

Mietz moved the Pleasure Seekers close to the Pike goal line, but his fourth-down pass sailed over the receiver’s head. And then the game was over. All the Pikes jumped up and down and hugged their girlfriends. The nonplaying brothers huddled and cheered. The players posed for a team picture. Another trophy would soon be locked in a closet, and Soibelman, the athletic director, accepted congratulations and announced plans for a victory celebration.

“It’s party time!” he yelled.

Across the way, Mietz wasn’t acting like a guy who didn’t care. He and his teammates moped off the field.

“I should go over and congratulate the Pikes,” he said. “They played well.”

He made the long walk to the Pike side and shook hands with a lot of the players. For a brief moment, the rivalry was forgotten and everyone was cool.