There’s at least one fan at BU hockey games who has earned his own Dog Pound cheer: Sasquatch. Otherwise known as Brian Zive, his nickname comes from the abundant hair on his upper body. At the height of the most dramatic moments in a BU men’s hockey game, Zive dashes to the Terrier fans in the BU student section (aka the Dog Pound), rips off his shirt, swings it around his head, and hollers as the BU Band plays the first few bars of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man.”

Over the past two decades, the routine has made Zive (CAS’94) a minor celebrity. Although he often comes to the games straight from his job as a campaign analyst at MIT, dressed in khakis and a V-neck sweater, he can’t walk through the concourse at Agganis Arena without getting slapped on the back and hugged.

It started in the early 1990s when Zive was a freshman at BU. “My buddies and I were at Conte Forum, and BU was down early, and there were some BC fans treating us unkindly,” he says. “BU came back and tied it with a couple of goals, and I just took off my shirt and my friends thought it was funny. We came back to Walter Brown Arena and I started doing it there, and it just kind of caught on.”

Be on the lookout for Brian Zive (CAS’94), also known as Sasquatch, as soon as the BU Band plays Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man.”

Zive soon became a fixture at men’s hockey games, and his antics became famous, appreciated not only by the team and other fans, but also by BU hockey legends like Mike Eruzione (SED’77), captain of the 1980 US Olympic gold medal–winning “Miracle on Ice” squad, and Jack Parker (SMG’68, Hon.’97), retired men’s ice hockey head coach. His antics still get the Dog Pound denizens on their feet, although, he says, he takes off his shirt less frequently these days.

“If you ask my wife,” he says, “I’m well past the age of being able to do this.” He tried to retire once, but the booing of fans forced him to rethink that decision. And although it’s a decade away, he envisions another yeti inheriting the role.

“My son is 9, so if in 10 years he ends up at BU and has the same chest hair that I have, maybe he can do it in the future,” says Sasquatch.