College Sports Traditions

Every year since 1961, football and basketball players at Middlebury College in Vermont pick up their wheelchair-bound fan, Butch, and bring him to the stadium sidelines to watch their games. At John Brown University, the volleyball team distributes candy to fans before each match. For years, fans attending a University of Maryland football game rubbed the bronze statue of their terrapin mascot, Testudo. Traditions like these are visible statements of school loyalty, and they are part of why college sports are unforgettable. College Sports Traditions: Picking Up Butch, Silent Night, and Hundreds of Others details not only the well-known traditions of major universities, but also the obscure customs of smaller schools. Approximately 1,200 traditions are captured, covering almost every college sport. It depicts such traditions as The Ohio State University’s “Script Ohio,” University of Kansas’s “Waving the Wheat,” Linfield College’s “End Zone Couches,” and even a list of traditions that involve streaking. The wide variety of traditions covered in this book are grouped thematically, including: Before the game During the game After a score After the game Mascot traditions Preseason traditions Traditions probably not university sanctioned Rivalries Yells, cheers, and chants From the crazy and eccentric to the touching and meaningful, these traditions connect fans and athletes across generations. The first of its kind, this comprehensive volume encompasses hundreds of universities and colleges throughout the U.S. Featuring 75 photos that bring many of these events to life, College Sports Traditions will be an entertaining read for every sports fan.

The perfect gift for rabid college alumniAll of the great traditions of college football are collected in the latest commemorative title from The Sporting News. Every Saturday in Autumn takes you on-campus to experience the pomp and pageantry of all that is uniquely college football in America. The Sporting News delivers the top 25 traditions in the country. From Touchdown Jesus at Notre Dame, to the 12th Man at Texas A&M, to great rivalries such as USC-UCLA, Florida-Georgia, and Army-Navy, Every Saturday in Autumn is all about the places where the game is so special.

A must-have for football fans of all ages, this handsomely designed gift book is a comprehensive illustrated guide to the greatest traditions and rivalries in college football. Every Saturday each fall, millions of Americans watch their favorite college teams take to the gridiron, battling to make it to the coveted national championship bowl game in January. From the Cornhuskers of the University of Nebraska to the Nittany Lions of Penn State, the USC Trojans to Alabama’s Crimson Tide, the University of Michigan Wolverines to the Clemson Tigers, each school has its own traditions, trivia, and rivalries. This concise, illustrated handbook is a collection of the past and present lore of college football’s major teams for both novices and diehard followers alike. Focusing on the top schools from each division, this handy guide contains original full-color illustrations that showcase the biggest traditions and rivalries in the sport, along with a short description and fun trivia. Learn about the pink visitor’s locker room at Iowa State, the prisoner exchange preceding the annual Army–Navy showdown, and the University of Miami team’s dramatic smoke-filled stadium entrance. The book also includes a special section of quick facts on some other schools that weren’t fully featured. Fascinating and informative, filled with seventy full-color illustrations, College Football Traditions and Rivalries is a must for every college football fan.

From their beginnings, campuses emerged as hotbeds of traditions and folklore. American college students inhabit a culture with its own slang, stories, humor, beliefs, rituals, and pranks. Simon J. Bronner takes a long, engaging look at American campus life and how it is shaped by students and at the same time shapes the values of all who pass through it. The archetypes of absent-minded profs, fumbling jocks, and curve-setting dweebs are the stuff of legend and humor, along with the all-nighters, tailgating parties, and initiations that mark campus tradition—and student identities. Undergraduates in their hallowed halls embrace distinctive traditions because the experience of higher education precariously spans childhood and adulthood, parental and societal authority, home and corporation, play and work. Bronner traces historical changes in these traditions. The predominant context has shifted from what he calls the “old-time college,” small in size and strong in its sense of community, to mass society’s “mega-university,” a behemoth that extends beyond any campus to multiple branches and offshoots throughout a state, region, and sometimes the globe. One might assume that the mega-university has dissolved collegiate traditions and displaced the old-time college, but Bronner finds the opposite. Student needs for social belonging in large universities and a fear of losing personal control have given rise to distinctive forms of lore and a striving for retaining the pastoral “campus feel” of the old-time college. The folkloric material students spout, and sprout, in response to these needs is varied but it is tied together by its invocation of tradition and social purpose. Beneath the veil of play, students work through tough issues of their age and environment. They use their lore to suggest ramifications, if not resolution, of these issues for themselves and for their institutions. In the process, campus traditions are keys to the development of American culture.

From the leather helmet era to the media circus of college football today, Travers presents a carefully researched examination of college football and its role in our society. Photographs complement the text, providing a deep sense of how the sport has evolved, details our obsession with identifying winners, and uses examples of popular culture— the top 8 football movies of all time—to accent the influence this sport has on our culture.

Project discusses the traditions surrounding college football games at universities in the United States.

Blue and white face paint at Duke; the Big Brown Jug trophy game between Minnesota and Michigan; touchdown Jesus at Notre Dame--American colleges and universities are packed with sports traditions that date long before the first telecast of ESPN. Now, the preeminent name in college guides, Edward B. Fiske, turns his pen to those schools that bleed their mascot colors. Whether a grand old favorite—Auburn anyone?--or a surprising addition—University of Pennsylvania--you'll be fascinated by the details Fiske brings to these sports infused schools.

In 1902, Martha Berry founded the Industrial School for Boys to educate the children of the Southern Appalachian Mountains, and in 1909 the school admitted women. The institution grew from a mountain industrial school to a two-year college in its first twenty-four years, became a four-year college in 1930, and has since become one of the leading liberal arts colleges in the South. This volume portrays, in word and image, the role of sports at Berry College throughout its 100-year history. Situating athletics within the social and cultural life of the college, the book includes both intramural and intercollegiate sport, and traces the evolution of the Viking tradition as it both parallels and reflects the development of sport in the United States. The story begins with the recreational and leisure activities of the early years of the school and traces the continuation of the sporting spirit from the days of the "Silver and the Blue" through the post-war "Blue Jacket" tradition, and ends with the Viking years of the last four decades. Of notable interest in the book is the development of the women's sports program, which has brought four national titles to the college; the importance of soccer to the college; the well-rounded intercollegiate program, which currently fields teams in seven sports; and an excellent intramural program.

As Pope reveals, the study of sport's ascension offers a unique window into a larger historical process whereby men and women, social classes, and racial and ethnic groups struggled over different versions of not only how to work and play, but what to value.