Turning Pages of ‘100 Things Colts Fans:’ ‘No Trim ’Til Colts Win’
INDIANAPOLIS — What good could come from going 1-15?
Indianapolis Colts fans had been treated to just two winning seasons in seven years before 1991, when everything completely fell apart.
Amid the misery came humor, a hilarious subplot revisited in Chapter 27 of the 2013 book 100 Things Colts Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die (Triumph Books). The Colts started 0-4, outscored by 45 points. As the outlook became increasingly bleak, two local radio stations came up with a catchy campaign to try to offer inspiration.
“No Trim ’Til Colts Win” became the rallying cry, promoted by Bob Kevoian and Tom Griswold on WFBQ’s “The Bob & Tom Show” as well as WENS radio personalities Audrey Rochelle and Scott Fisher.
While some initially thought the slogan pertained to not trimming facial hair until the Colts finally broke their winless streak, Kevoian and Griswold knew “trim” could be construed as something else. So did Rochelle and Fisher, who advocated fans should abstain from sex until their team finally produced.
The “trim” euphemism for sex was tied in popular culture to comedian-turned-actor Eddie Murphy in the 1982 movie 48 Hours. Murphy’s jail-sprung character, Reggie Hammond, propositioned a hooker in a police station, but was whisked away before he could score by salty cop Jack Cates, played by Nick Nolte. “Do you know how close I was to getting some trim?” Hammond complains.
“Obviously it’s a double entendre, but maybe not so obviously now,” Griswold said. “That was sort of floating out there. Then the idea was we would not shave, no trimming of our facial hair until the Colts won a game. We did bumper stickers, a billboard. We ended up getting a ton of publicity. We didn’t think it would. We did stuff that was stupid because we thought it was funny.”
While Kevoian and Griswold refused to shave, Rochelle and Fischer took vows of celibacy. The latter suggested the Colts weren’t winning because players were having sex too close to game day.
“My wife said, ‘Why just wait for a win?’” Fischer told the Associated Press. “Why not wait for a Super Bowl?”
“For the so-called straight press, the joke was ‘No Trim ‘Till Colts Win,’ Bob and Tom aren’t going to shave,” Griswold said. “But the subtle, some might think joke was no one is going to have any sex until the Colts win. A lot of our listeners took it that way. I don’t want to get too pretentious here, but there’s a famous play in which the women refused to have sex with the men until they stopped having a war.”
In “Lysistrata,” a 411 B.C. play written by Aristophanes, the title character persuaded women of Greece to withhold sex from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate an end to The Peloponnesian War.
“This now sounds so ridiculously inflated, but that was the gag,” Griswold said. “OK, ladies, you’re not allowed to have sex until the Colts win. We actually pulled it off. It was goofy and funny and stupid. And I ended up looking like an idiot with my terrible mustache. It’s not good.”
Kevoian laughs about how his partner looked at the time.
“It was pretty sad and pathetic,” he said of Griswold’s unshaven appearance. “We were all scruffy. It really was embarrassing. It was just incredible how it changed from no trim to the mustache to no trim from the ladies, either. It became a national story because the Colts were winless.”
Part of Kevoian’s persona was his thick mustache. So he didn’t look nearly as scruffy as his partner.
“I had never grown facial hair,” Griswold said. “I had never tried. Bob, of course, has a legendary mustache. Bob’s mustache is older than most of your readers, I think. Bob has a beautiful, very thick mustache; he literally started growing it the day he graduated from high school. For Bob, it was a matter of kind of making it a Fu Manchu and growing it down. For me, it was a matter of letting it go, which I had never done. Of course, as would happen, the Colts didn’t win and I’ve got this pretty awful facial hair thing.
“What happens is people that don’t know you’re part of some stunt, they’re wondering, ‘What the hell is Tom Griswold doing? He looks awful.’ I had a couple of formal things I had to do. There’s a picture of me in a tux by the way that I still have, and I have this horrible mustache.”
The Colts visited Seattle in the fifth game. The Seahawks entered 1-3. It seemed like the ideal time for the Colts to end their skid. Instead, Seattle won easily, 31-3. Head coach Ron Meyer, who had led the Colts to the AFC East division title in 1987, was fired after the Seahawks loss. Rick Venturi replaced him. A return home didn’t help. The Colts lost 21-3 to Pittsburgh at home.
The sensationalizing TV show Current Affair visited town to report on the sex strike. The video clip is on YouTube. Kevoian and Griswold, both sporting unkempt facial hair, were interviewed on the steps of the Hoosier Dome. The report included an interview with a woman who intended to abstain from consummating her marriage on her honeymoon.
The Colts kept losing. They fell to 0-7 with a 42-6 loss at Buffalo. Two more home games didn’t help. The Colts lost 17-6 to the New York Jets and then 10-6 to the Miami Dolphins. The slide had reached 0-9.
“The other aspect of it was as a Colts fan, God, it was so painful,” Griswold said. “Bob and I have been season ticket holders since the very first game at the dome. Oddly enough, it’s one of those things that proves what a great city Indy is and what great fans they are. People have a sense of humor. With all of the teams here, people had generally really hung in there through the lean years. It was just kind of a way to keep the whole thing with the Colts up and running and in everybody’s consciousness.
“Remember there was a time here when the Colts games weren’t all sold out. We did lots of stuff to keep the Colts in the consciousness of the people here in town. We did ‘Lord Help Our Colts’ songs with (blues musician) Duke Tumatoe. We always had Colts players on the air.”
Finally, on Nov. 10, 2011, the Colts rallied for a 28-27 road win over the Jets.
“It was a great day when they won,” Kevoian said. “I’m curious to know how many babies were born nine months later.”
It would be the team’s only win in a 1-15 season that goes down as the worst 16-game record in franchise history. The 1991 Colts redefined offensive ineptitude with just 143 points scored, a dubious franchise record for a 16-game season. The team failed to score a touchdown in nine games. They managed 10 points or less in 12 games. Kicker Dean Biasucci led the team in scoring with just 59 points, 15-of-26 on field goals and 14 extra points.
“That was Dean Biasucci’s year,” said Mike Chappell, Colts beat writer for The Indianapolis Star. “It was Dean Biasucci or nobody. The season from hell. It was Groundhog Day, same stuff, over and over.”
Adds Biasucci, “We’d get down to the 5-yard line, then the next thing you know three plays later, I’m kicking a 48-yard field goal.”
If nothing else, “No Trim ’Til Colts Win” gave fans another reason to keep track of the team.
“That had people actually staying interested,” Kevoian said. “People wanted to know the score that week, like, ‘Can we shave or have sex, finally?’ I think we kind of helped the team through one of their worst seasons.”
(Phillip B. Wilson has covered the Indianapolis Colts for more than two decades and authored the 2013 book 100 Things Colts Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die. He’s on Twitter @pwilson24, on Facebook at @allcoltswithphilb and @100thingscoltsfans, and his email is phillipbwilson24@yahoo.com.)
