“Before there was Johnny Football, there was Johnny SPEA.” --Iván 'Pudge' Rodríguez.  

It’s hard to imagine Indiana University without Johnny SPEA--I really can’t even remember life here without him. Ever since 2012, Bloomington has nurtured and grown along side the kid who has a tattoo of the Charley Biggs’ logo on his back. 

I remember meeting him for the first time. We were fortunate enough to share the same pledge class.  His breath hinted of half-eaten quesadillas and chaw, but that didn’t stop me from reaching out.       

“Zard Nation!” he exclaimed after I introduced myself.    

At that exact moment, I knew from this point on that my world was never going to be the same.   

Months went by as I watched the kid turn into the man.   

“Puberty hit me late.” Johnny talks about in his recently released autobiography, Chaw: The Johnny SPEA Story .  “I never had peach fuzz on my plums until about sophomore year of college,” he states. “It was a weird time for me with being the only dude with naked berries.”     

Born Patrick Allen Ramsey, Johnny talks about his childhood in his memoir, “I loved childhood. I had my Nintendo Gamecube, my tortillas and my shredded cheese. Life was good.”   

While his elementary years seemed divine, his high school years were anything but.   

“Dyson was his name, and bullying was his game,” Johnny recalls. “There was no way around him on the way to the baseball fields after school every day. He made my life a living hell.”   

With being constantly bullied, he began to abuse chewing tobacco.   

“There would be mornings when I’d wake up with a chaw in that I didn’t remember from the night before.”   

Through diversity, though, is where Johnny SPEA shines. Hell, it is the exact reason why he is named Johnny SPEA, today.   

Being bullied encompassed his high school years and his grades mirrored his then fragile state of mind. He graduated from George Town Preparatory High with a GPA of 2.1.  

“Still passed all my classes,” Johnny talks about in his book.   

It was because of this GPA that John decided to make something of himself and join the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University.  

“Everything changed,” Johnny states. “I was now getting 60’s instead of 70’s on class coloring assignments.”   

I now bring you to today, where Johnny SPEA still shines in the Bloomington community. I took it upon myself to go around town and see what the locals thought of him. Here are a few quotes I was given:    

“Who?”
– Patricia Bats, elderly woman   

“Please tell him that he isn’t allowed back into my restaurant.”
– John Campbell, Wright food court manager   

“His shirts smell like if a cat pissed on a rotting raccoon corpse.” – Paige, close friend   

“Hey, I attended SPEA, too!”
– Mark Losman, homeless man     

When one thinks of Indiana University, one may think of Bobby Knight throwing a plastic chair onto a basketball court. Another may think of the large amount of international students who attend here. But a true Hoosier would look back at their alma mater and know that it's the school that Johnny SPEA built.

RIP Johnny SPEA - Give the devil hell, my old friend.