How BU’s Dog Pound went undercover to pull off a Beanpot prank for the ages

Standing in the heart of the Boston College student section at TD Garden, Ethan Gassé swallowed his pride and let it fly.

“F–K BU!” he yelled, getting the fans around him to join in on the chant. “F–K BU!”

A senior at Boston University, Gassé is on the leadership team of the Dog Pound, BU hockey’s student section. He’s been a diehard fan for four years. 

But there were only a few minutes until go-time. It was time to get into character. 

Gassé was going undercover in the student section of BU’s arch-rival at the Beanpot final with one mission: trick BC students into unfurling a large banner that read: “BC SUCKS.”

The first step for Gassé — and fellow Dog Pound members Diego Bichara and Alex Opiela — was to convince this section full of BC students that they also attended BC. All three showed up to the game in scarlet and white BU gear, but they shed their jerseys and hoodies for black and white undershirts. That, they hoped, would be enough to blend in with the thousand-plus BC students in attendance. 

Starting anti-BU chants was another tactic. And Gassé was ready to improvise if pressed on the legitimacy of his BC fandom. If someone asked why he, Bichara and Opiela weren’t wearing BC gear?

“Our girlfriends are bringing our jerseys — they’re on the way.” 

If someone wanted to know where on campus they lived? 

“The Mods,” Gassé was ready to reply, referencing the small village of modular housing units in the middle of BC’s campus. 

His major? Religion — of course. 

“I make fun of BC so often, and I was thinking about this for so long,” Gassé said. “Most of it was me telling Diego and Alex, ‘Be prepared for when they ask you this, and this is going to be our story.’”

About an hour before puck drop, with the arena mostly empty, Gassé, Bichara and Opiela rolled up the banner and walked from the Dog Pound’s corner of the upper balcony to Section 325, one of the many sections BC fans were set to occupy. 

The trio tied knots on the top of the banner — so they would know which way to unroll it — and found a spot near the top of the section. Things stayed quiet for a while, but the section eventually filled in with students. 

“When nobody was there, it seemed like, ‘Okay, this is going to be so easy, not worried about this at all.’ But BC fans started showing up. They’re yelling, they’re rowdy, saying, ‘I want to beat somebody from BU up! I want to punch them in the face!’” Gassé said. “I looked at Alex and Diego and I was like, ‘Okay, shut up. From here on out, we don’t talk to each other.’”

As puck drop drew  closer, Gassé, Bichara and Opiela began to explain the plan to hold up the banner to those around them. When a group of BC students behind him asked what the banner said, Gassé didn’t skip a beat.

“It says ‘BC OWNS BU,’” Gassé told them.

“Yeah! That’s awesome!” the students replied. 

Gassé, Bichara and Opiela planned to wait until both teams skated onto the ice ahead of the national anthem. When the public address announcer said: “Your Boston University Terriers…and your Boston College Eagles!” the group would begin to unroll the banner and pass it onto the rows below. 

“The cover was perfect,” Gassé said. “The time came, and I was about to piss my pants, right? They say ‘Boston College Eagles’ and I look at Alex and Diego. It was just like immediately, we all knew what to do.”

As soon as they heard their cue, Gassé, Bichara and Opiela handed their ends off to the next row. Within a few seconds, the banner stretched across the entire section. 

Gassé, Bichara and Opiela had a full row to themselves —  since they were “saving seats for their girlfriends.” That made for a swift exit to the concourse before anyone could realize the stunt they’d pulled off. 

For a moment, though, Gassé stood under the banner as the BC students around him held it up for the rest of the crowd to see.

“It was probably a second or less, but it felt like an hour,” Gassé said. “Underneath this thing, surrounded by my sworn nemesis, and I was like, ‘Holy sh-t, we actually did it.’ I looked to my left and I just walked calmly out of the section.”

On the other side of the balcony, the Dog Pound erupted into celebration as they saw what was unfolding. Yes, the BC student section was waving a giant banner that said “BC SUCKS.”

***

The stunt was months in the making, even if it only materialized at the Beanpot on a moment’s notice.

Gassé was inspired over the summer after reading about a prank at the 2004 Harvard-Yale football game, where Yale students tricked hundreds of Harvard fans into holding up placards that collectively spelled out: “WE SUCK.” 

As a senior, Gassé wanted to make a final mark on the Dog Pound before graduating. He reached out to Dog Pound president Paco Moguel and discussions began from there. 

The Dog Pound spray-painted the “BC SUCKS” banner back in 2023, and held it up during that year’s BU-BC game at Agganis Arena. Since then, it had been lying around in someone’s apartment. 

The initial plan was to pull the stunt during the BU-BC game at Conte Forum on Jan. 25, but the logistics proved impossible to execute. The get-in price for that game was well over $100, and it would have been too difficult to sneak the huge tifo through arena security. 

Even after BU and BC clinched their respective spots in the title game last Monday, nobody from the Dog Pound brought up the stunt. Nonetheless, the club’s leadership planned to have the BU Band bring the banner through a private checkpoint with the rest of its equipment. The Dog Pound would wave the banner during starting lineup introductions, as had been done at Agganis in the past. 

But as he went about his preparations for the Dog Pound during the Harvard-Northeastern consolation game, Moguel had the idea. With the banner already in the building, there was a perfect opportunity to pull off the stunt. 

Moguel texted his idea to Dog Pound Vice President Josh Mester, and the plan developed from there. As soon as Gassé heard about the scheme, he asked to be involved. 

“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is it. This is what I’ve been wanting to do,’” Gassé said. “Immediately, I was like, ‘Yeah, I want to do this.’”

Moguel, Mester and Gassé enlisted Bichara and Opiela to help out, and the plan was set into motion.

“It was an entire operation that we basically did one hour and 30 minutes before puck drop,” Moguel said.

The disorganization of BC’s student section was key to success, according to Moguel and Gassé. BC has enjoyed enormous student turnout — at both Conte Forum and TD Garden — since the team re-emerged as a national contender last season.

But unlike the Dog Pound at BU, there is no leadership organizing the student section. That made it easy for Gassé, Bichara and Opiela to parachute into a section and convince students to hold up the banner.

“You couldn’t do this prank on us, because we know everybody who does things,” Gassé said. “We know who the section organizers are and we know that if some guy brings in a flag and is like, ‘Okay, we’re gonna do this,’ everybody would be like ‘Who are you? You’re not one of the people who usually gets the fan section going.’”

Sure enough, nobody in Section 325 questioned the banner, which stayed up for about 30 seconds — even after Gassé, Bichara and Opiela headed back to the concourse.

“There was still that fear that somebody knew what we did,” Gassé said. “But they were clueless.”

The prank set the stage for what was to come. The Terriers went on to score four unanswered goals and win the title, and the Dog Pound convinced former BU stars Lane Hutson and Macklin Celebrini to make guest appearances and wave the BU flag during the game.

By the time the Terriers scored an empty-netter to make it 4-1 with 1:42 to go, BC’s student contingent — including Section 325 — was heading to the exits.

“Maybe this will light a fire under the butts of some diehard BC fans, that maybe they do need to get organized. Maybe they’re gonna want to get us back or something,” Gassé said. “But right now? Man, we just won. We totally won.”