Who'd have thought that he was crazy?

Rollen Stewart, once famous for his wig and his whereabouts, now spends his days in a California jail

By Jerry Crowe
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
Wednesday, May 28, 2008

IONE, Calif. — For more than 10 years starting in the late 1970s, Rollen Stewart was the nation's most celebrated sports fan, a wig-wearing, wigged-out self-promoter who showed up at virtually every major athletic event worldwide and always managed to plant himself smack-dab in front of a television camera.

He was known as the Rainbow Man, for the multicolored Afro wigs he sported, or Rock 'n' Rollen, for the party vibe he exuded. Later, after finding religion, he morphed into the John 3:16 guy, for the Biblical messages he espoused.

He says he drove about 60,000 miles a year to attend events, and he got more TV face time than the network announcers who sometimes left him tickets.

He found fame, as planned, simply by showing up. But the fanatic who was always there, Stewart says, really was no fan at all.

"I despised sports," he says.

Stewart is 63 now, no longer wears an Afro or any other type of hairpiece to mask his baldness, and last attended a sporting event about 20 years ago. ...