How one game turned into 362 straight: The story of USC’s most psychotic fan
It’s game day at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
You walk near the South Lawn of the Coliseum near Exposition Park Drive, excited for the game. There’s the familiar “Hot dog, hot dog” exclamations as a vendor bangs their spatula on the grill. The idea crosses your mind to buy one, but something in the distance catches the corner of your eye.
It’s a larger, grander grill with a master flipping burgers and engaging in small talk with fans. The tailgate, known as “Psychogate,” is hosted by Roy Nwaisser, a fan who has become as associated with USC football as its Cardinal and Gold uniforms. It’s a tailgate that’s grown so much in popularity through the years that there’s an official website for it.
Nwaisser has attended every USC football game over the last 30 years. During the coronavirus-shortened season, Nwaisser only went to games that allowed fans, setting an asterisk on the record.
His commitment to the streak is one thing, but his hospitality to the people around him is another.
What started as a normal tailgate exploded into “Psychogate,” a pregame party where everyone is welcomed. Almost all fans will shy away from allowing opposing fans to join them at the party, but that’s simply not the case for Nwaisser.
“He’s just a big-time ambassador for USC and especially for USC football,” said Paul Baltierra, who met Nwaisser through Twitter. “Seeing that guy … out on the road games and just want to get people together and then at Psychogate at home where he’s telling any opposing fan like, ‘Hey, come have fun.’”
Origins and close calls
His love for the Trojans began in a nontraditional fashion. As a kid, Nwaisser butt heads with a family friend at Thanksgiving. That week, USC and UCLA were playing, and his family asked them both who they would root for.
Nwaisser’s friend said the Bruins, prompting Nwiasser to automatically side with the Trojans.
“That was the first time I ever took a side on USC vs. UCLA,” Roy said. “The first time I decided to side with USC.”
Nwaisser wouldn’t attend his first football game until 1990, his freshman year at USC. While he didn’t attend most of the season’s games, it was the rivalry game that caught his interest.
Although, “to this day,” Nwaisser believes the rivalry game is “one of the most exciting football games,” he’s seen, the game didn’t immediately lead to his attendance streak.
“The way it started was my senior year, I just thought it would be really cool to go to every USC football game, home and away,” he said. “And so I did.”
He found it fun and did the same the next year, then again the year after. Then again and again for 29 years. The streak will be 30 years this fall.
“The streak is completely accidental,” Nwaisser said. “[I] never planned on having any streak like this.”
That accident sparked a streak older than practically every current undergraduate student. It’s also second to Giles Pellerin’s streak of 797 consecutive games. Nwaisser is at 362.
Even though it began as an accident, a single moment motivated him to keep it going.
Drowning in law school work the day before USC faced UC Berkeley in the ’90s, Nwaisser thought to himself, “This is where it ends.” The streak was just a little more than two years at the time.
But, something kept nagging and aggravating Nwaisser. The thought of missing the game, one within driving distance, irked him. So, he made a decision.
“I called a buddy of mine in law school [Bob Moreno] who I thought would be crazy enough to go at the last minute, and he was,” Nwaisser said. “We got my car and drove to Cal, didn’t have tickets [and] parked at a meter somewhere, found tickets from a scalper, went to the game and then drove right back home, so we can get back to our classwork.”
That was the point where Nwaisser said that he knew he wanted to keep his streak going as long as possible.
But there have been multiple close calls to the streak ending.
USC was set to play Penn State on the road in 1994. Nwaisser and his friend were prepared to travel the Friday night before the game, but his friend’s mom had changed their flights for a better rate. It turned out that the flight they originally booked crashed, killing all 132 people on board.
Another time, Nwaisser’s game day flight took off moments before LAX was shut down because of an active shooter.
For the most part, the streak continues, and with how easy it is to buy tickets nowadays, who knows when it will end? In the mid-1990s, flying to games, buying tickets and booking hotels proved more difficult than it is now. As a regular at the AAA office, Nwaisser would always look for each city’s guidebooks which included a list of hotels in that specific city.
“I would have to go through and call [the hotels] individually to find out how close they were to the airport or to the stadium, and how much their rates were,” he said. “I ended up in some pretty bad dumps.”
It made the process arduous and the “bad dumps” forgettable, but his passion for watching the Trojans steeped it all.
Some may wonder how it’s possible to keep the streak going. Nwaisser’s simplified outlook on attending games has made it easy — the season usually consists of 12 Saturday games, half of which are at home and, if they’re not home, the distance is manageable. It follows that classic cliche phrase: If there’s a will, there’s a way.
“If anybody really wanted to go to every game for a season, they could probably do it, and it wouldn’t be that hard,” he said. “The hard part is doing it for 30 years [and] not having anything get in the way of a single game. That’s where it takes a little bit of luck.”
Luck is involved but also good friends that help.
Nwaisser’s childhood friend, Michael Reed, was in the middle of planning his wedding. Having known each other since the second grade, Reed wanted Nwaisser to be his best man.
However, with the wedding taking place during the USC season, planning the day had to be meticulous.
Reed and his wife originally planned for a Saturday wedding, but the Trojans were playing that day, and Reed knew Nwaisser wouldn’t make the trip. Thankfully, his wife understood.
“I said, ‘Well, unfortunately, I’m going to have to change it if we can’t change the date.’ She totally understands because she knows how [Nwaisser] is,” Reed said. “So we got married on that Friday, Nov. 24 and went to the reception and everything. And [Roy] took the very first flight out that Saturday.”
“Wants everybody to be together”
Nwaisser’s commitment to the streak is one thing, but his hospitality to the people around him is another.
There’s a side of Nwaisser that people may not notice upon meeting him in person or seeing him on social media.
Beyond the streak, Baltierra describes Nwaisser as an “extrovert,” someone who’s always trying to get as many people as possible together to have a good time. He’s also always welcoming to road fans, which is easier said than done since the trash talk from opposing supporters can be overwhelming.
“He’s really big on he wants everybody to enjoy themselves and wants everybody to be together,” Baltierra said. “He’s always said like, ‘Hey, well, I like it when I’m welcome because I go to all these road games.’”
After all, it was a specific road game where Nwaisser’s moniker as “USC Psycho” catapulted.
Nwaisser’s famous license plate that reads “USC SYCO” was born during his senior year at USC. People thought he got the license plate because he was a psychology major — instead, it was because he wanted to highlight his fandom for the team.
When in law school, Moreno assumed he’d bring the license plate into the game since other fans did to show support for their respective team.
“The thought never occurred to me to take my license plate to a game, and I was like, ‘Oh, that sounds like a good idea,’” Nwaisser said.
Next up for the Trojans that season was a trip to South Bend, Ind. and the debut of a license plate that made Nwaisser recognizable. He sat in the front row of the student section during the game then was shown on TV flexing it.
The next week during USC’s homecoming game, fans began to realize he was the man with the plate. Game attendees came up to him and said they’d seen him on TV, so he proceeded to keep bringing the item with him to games.
“I get on TV a few times a season. People would see me and just kind of knew me for my license plate,” he said. “Then [I] got on online, I would use ‘USC Psycho’ as my username. And that’s kind of how it started.”
He became known as “USC Psycho,” something that’s stuck with him through his nearly 30-year streak.
For Nwaisser, he’s not keeping this streak alive to top Pellerin’s famous record. Nwaisser, at the end of the day, is just like any other fan.
“I’m not doing this so I can break any kind of records. I just do this because I love it,” he said. “If there ever comes a point where I don’t love it, I’ll probably stop.”