College sports traditions

By NOAH WOYAK

The Mirror reporter

Some of the most fun parts of college sports are not the games themselves, but the traditions each school follows. For athletes and viewers alike, the traditions are some of the most memorable parts of each game.

For example, Wisconsin football has its traditional “Jump Around.” After the third quarter of every football game, the song “Jump Around” by House of Pain is played and the fans in the stadium jump up and down. The jumping in the stadium is said to be so powerful it shakes the stadium and also registers on the Richter scale.

“I go to Badger games almost every year, and Jump Around is always a cool thing to experience,” said junior Nathan Roth.

Many other stadiums like to get their fans involved in their celebrations including Arkansas’s “Calling the Hogs” and Kansas’ “Rock, Chalk, Jayhawk” chant.

Bringing a live animal onto the field is another common tradition. It is practiced by schools such as Auburn, Yale, Georgia, and USC. One particularly interesting tradition involving an animal is Colorado’s “Ralphie’s Run” which involves the five student-athletes running a live buffalo, named Ralphie, around the field in a horseshoe pattern.

Some of the traditions in schools can be very strange. For example, before every Clemson game, players gather around a special rock nicknamed “Howard’s Rock” and rub it for good luck. Another example is the Stanford tradition of the “Bearial,” where before every game the football team plays against rival UC-Berkeley students take a small stuffed bear, similar to UC-Berkeley’s mascot Oski the Bear, and impale it through the White Memorial Fountain. This fountain is chosen due to its many different branches and points, and has gained itself the nickname “The Claw.” The stuffed bear stays impaled on The Claw until the end of the week.

If there’s one thing that these traditions are good at, it’s bringing everybody together to help rally their team and have some fun watching the game. They are some of the most bizarre and memorable things in college sports, and they definitely make the games more interesting.