So Washington Capitals fans thought it would be clever to bring cardboard cutout faces of President Barack Obama to Game 3 of the Caps-Bruins series Monday night in an attempt to get under the skin of right wing know-nothing and B’s goaltender Tim Thomas.

You may remember Thomas snubbing the Pres back in January. In last night’s game, Thomas allowed the most goals he has all series (three), but the Bruins still won 4-3. So did it work? Um, absolutely not.

If Washington fans really wanted to frighten Thomas, they would have held up giant 40×25 posterboard replicas of the Clean Energy Bill or had the entire fan base wear pant suits in honor of Hillary Clinton or have tossed rainbow colored pucks on the ice. There are better ways, and certainly more creative ways, to get under the skin of conservative hockey players.

This brings us to a larger issue. When’s the last time a fan base truly came up with something creative?

PTF was a big fan of the big head phenomenon. But, like all good fan crazes, it went the way of the wave (i.e. got Tebow-like overexposure).

Nearly every college basketball fan base has the big heads now and it has truly lost its luster.

A look at some other fan actions that should be trumpeted or dumped:

Crowd surfing: Good

Ladies only. No one wants to heave your husky friend Bill over their heads during a timeout.

Lady Gaga brought this back in 2010 to rave reviews and you sometimes see it during college football games when the girl in your chemistry class has taken one too many sips from the Franzia box.

Booing: Good

A time-honored tradition in sports. You can chant all you want and get about half the stadium on board (at most). But give me tens of thousands of people lustily booing in unison any day of the week. It sounds downright scary and there’s no way for a player to ignore it if it’s loud enough. One of my favorite boo sessions of all-time came at halftime of the 2003 NFC Championship Game (fast-forward to end). What the hell happened to JaRule and more importantly, Ashanti, anyway?

Towel waving/matching t-shirts: Bad

The goons known as Pittsburgh Steelers fans made this popular with the Terrible Towel back in the ’70s. Well, it should have stayed in the ’70s. This doesn’t intimidate. It looks cool for about three seconds into a telecast and then does not have any effect the rest of the way. This also goes for matching t-shirts as well (i.e. White out the Lions or Black out the Bears). Lame.

The ’80s double-first, both hands in the air, back and forth pump: Great

It’s difficult to find a documented tribute to this, but you know it when you see it. Your best luck would be scouring the corny yet always entertaining ’80s NBA championship tapes.

Overweight Celtics fans from Boston’s North End perfected this move decades ago. If you look closely, you might be able to see their bigfoot-like existence through this grainy tape:

This trophy was bound for doom

Haha, everyone snickers that John Calipari’s 2012 NCAA trophy is going to be taken away. We get it, the guy cheats.

But Alabama football, not Kentucky hoops or Baylor women’s basketball, has been the first college program to have its 2012 National title trophy taken away. Yup, you guessed it. One of the Crimson Tide’s dad’s smashed it.

In all honesty, it’s shocking that this hasn’t happened before with this particular trophy. I mean every time Nick Saban or Les Miles holds this thing over their respective heads I almost expect it to smash at the feet of Terry Bradshaw into a million pieces. It’s without question, the most smashable championship trophy in all of sports.

A distant second would be the MLB’s Commissioner’s Trophy with all those bendable flags. Plus it would be dangerously fun just to walk up to Bud Selig after the deed was done and tell him, “Hey Bud. Sorry. I smashed your trophy.”