Saturday, September 17, 2011

Some football cheers.

There was a great article in today's "New York Times" sports section about the University of Chicago and their small-scale football program. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/17/sports/ncaafootball/at-the-university-of-chicago-football-and-higher-education-mix.html?scp=1&sq=university%20of%20chicago&st=cse It's the story of the University dropping football after many years of collegiate dominance is recounted. Today, University of Chicago plays Division III football.

What really got me in the article however was the University's football cheer--a cheer that was more about the school asceticism than its love of the game:

Themistocles, Thucydides
The Peloponnesian War
X-squared, y-squared
H2SO4
Who for? What for?
Who we gonna yell for?
Go Maroons!

That of course made me think of the cheers Philip Roth recounted in "Portnoy's Complaint."

Give a yell, Give a yell,
A good, substantial yell
And when we yell, we yell like hell
And this is what we yell.

Ikey, Mikey, Jake, and Sam,
We're the boys who eat no ham
We play football, baseball, soccer
We keep matzohs in our locker.
Aye, aye, aye, Weequahic High!
-

White bread, rye bread,
Pumpernickel, challah,
All for Weequahic,
Stand up and hollah!

-

Then I did a bit of research and came upon a few more University of Chicago cheers.

CHICAGO CHEER

C-H . . . Chicago!
C-H . . . Chicago!
C-H . . . Chicago!
What is C H for?
METHANE!
-

PHYSICAL CONSTANT CHEER

Gimme the speed of light ......C
Gimme Planck's constant.........H
Gimme root negative one..........I
Gimme carbon......................C
Gimme the Bohr radius..............A
Gimme the gravitational constant....G
Gimme the additive identity of a non-trivial group...O
What's that spell? ...............CHICAGO!
(if you said CHICAGO, you are a true Maroon)

ARHYTHMIC CHEER (MM. = 72)

Largo, lento, adagio, andante,
Allegro con brio,
Presto, presto, presto!


LAW SCHOOL CHEER (apocryphal)

Wall Street, Law Review,
Contingent fees, all right!
To get an A from Levi,
We'll study all the night.
Rules of law and bar exams,
They can go to h---;
It's economic theory,
For which we're goin' to yell.
SO GO, GO, EFFICIENCY,
GILBERT'S ALL THE WAY.
Learned Hand and U of C
Are going to win this day.
GO, MAROONS!



SCHOLARLY YELLS

Logarithm, biorhythm,
Entropy, kinetics,
MPC, GNP, bioenergetics!
Maximize and integrate,
Titrate and Equilibrate--
GO, MAROONS!

Maximize our GNP,
Titrate their solution;
Calculate their MPC,
Crush their revolution!
GO, MAROONS!

2 comments:

dave trott said...

Those are great football cheers George. What I love is the counterpoint in each case.
They reminded me of this song my son used to love when he was a little boy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmwlzwGMMwc

george tannenbaum said...

Dave, like a lot of Americans of my generation, I grew up listening to Tom Lehrer. I think one of my kids got kudos in high-school chemistry for bringing in the "Elements" video.