It's the Great Cheater, Charlie Brown

As your superiors prepare for another Halloween while watching our hired help from NU's Doctorate Program sew popped collars into our costumes, I perused through the TV guide to see what haunted entertainment I could find. After shuddering when we saw NHPTV was a airing a ghastly program called "Richard Umile Shows You How To Strip For Your Lover", we happened upon a television classic. It was a remake of a classic Peanuts comic strip cartoon that we enjoyed as young wards growing up on the estate. A thorough description of this Halloween Classic appeared in the TV Guide:

In the 2005 half-hour animated special It's The Great Cheater, Charlie Brown, the coaches and players of U. Maine's hockey program celebrate Halloween, with Head Coach Tim Whitehead hoping that, finally, he will be visited by The Great Cheater, while Blackbears' forward Keith Johnson is invited to a junior high school Halloween party. Whitehead believes in a strange hybrid of a hockey coach, outlaw, and NCAA Rules Violating character named: The Great Cheater.

Whitehead thinks that the Great Cheater will arise out of the most revered cemetery in Maine on Halloween night and deliver phantom scholarships and illegal financial gifts to all the 20-something Canadian hockey recruits from "Parts Unknown". Of course, Whitehead becomes somewhat obsessed with his self-appointed mission to not only receive illegal scholarships from The Great Cheater for his undying belief, but he actually wants to be in the cemetery when the benevolent giver of academically ineligible players rises from among the gravestones.

October 31st has arrived again, and the night of Halloween is upon the coaches of Maine's hockey program. Assistant coach Grant Standbrook gets his boss Whitehead to carry home home his recruiting list, and decides he doesn't really like what's inside the envelope showing the list of french speaking academic detritus he's recruited.

While the coaches are busy white-outing the SAT scores of their incoming freshmen (known as Maine's "Trick or Cheat" campaign), Whitehead is penning his annual letter to the Great Cheater.


Each year, Coach Whitehead hopes that his letter to the Great Cheater will give him the illegal edge he needs to keep his scandal ridden program afloat.

Standbrook is obviously embarrassed by his boss who is ridiculed by the other Hockey East coaches. Whitehead patiently explains the merits of the Great Cheater to one of his players, Keith Johnson, but dismisses his non-belief of the spectre as a matter of moral differences and conflicts of Johnson's personal "old enough to pee, old enough for me" doctrine.

Every year Whitehead returns to the most revered cemetery in Maine he knows with Blackbear mascot "Bananas"......


The Great Cheater is believed to rise out of the cemetery to bestow gifts of illegal scholarships to those who are true believers.

Whitehead: "Here we are, Bananas, sitting in a cemetery waiting for the Great Cheater. Every Halloween the Great Cheater flies through the air with his bag of illicit recruiting gifts, and just think.....if you and I sit here all night, we may get to see him!"

"I really appreciate your sitting out here with me, Bananas.....
I must admit, however, that I've been wondering why you keep wearing those dark glasses all the time."

Bananas:
"There are certain times when you prefer Not to be recognized with Maine hockey coaches"

One year, Whitehead persuades freshman Vince Laise to keep his waiting.....
Since Vince, at age 23 is old enough to stay up all night, Vince must decide whether to join Johnson in trick or treating with local teens, or keep vigil in the cemetery with his coach, Tim Whitehead.

As the local kids go trick or treating, Keith Johnson is found wearing his famous ghost costume, which has 18 holes instead of the traditional two (for obvious reasons).

As the kids count the "spoils" of their trick or treat bags........

Johnson says: "I got a rock (in my pocket, that is)."

After trick or treating is over, the kids gather for the rest of the evening for a Halloween party. The highlight of the party is when Johnson goes bobbing for adolescents and brings up one with Bananas on the other end of it.

After being lambasted by Johnson about "venereal diseases", Bananas decides to go out on patrol searching for the Scarlet Baron. As our heroic fighter pilot lurks through the underbrush of the ugly end of Commonwealth Avenue (actually the Orono neighborhood's backyards), struggling to find his way behind night clubs and Kashi kitchens....he ends up in the cemetery.


While searching for the Scarlet Baron, Famous World War I Fighter Pilot "Bananas" saw many troubling glimpses of war when flying past windows in BU's Warren Towers co-ed dormitary.

Bananas rises up in the moonlight of the cemetery....Whitehead, thinking The Great Cheater has finally arrived, faints.

Laise is pretty upset when he realizes he spent the whole night in a cemetery, missing out on all the treats and the party, only to witness his team's stupid mascot, Bananas.

Laise: "I was robbed! I spent the whole night waiting for the Great Cheater when I could have been out meeting high school girls with KJ! Halloween is over and I missed it! You blockhead! You kept me up all night waiting for the Great Cheater and all that came was a fake bear who strips for no damn reason!"

"I didn't get a chance to go out to the party! And it was all your fault! What a fool I was. And could have met Candy and Caitlin! And Cindy and Mary and all sorts of cheerleaders! But no, I had to listen to you! You Whitehead. What a fool I was. Trick or Treat only comes once a year. And I miss it by sitting in a cemetery with a Whitehead. You owe me financial and academic restitution!"

Whitehead: "You've heard about fury in a twenty-something Canadian scorned, haven't you?"

Johnson: "Yes, I guess I have."

Whitehead: "Well, that's nothing compared to the fury of a twenty-something Canadian who has been cheated out of Trick or Treat".

Johnson: "Good grief".

Collar Up.