I Feel Stupid and Contagious: Smells of School Spirit

It was a brave and heroic battle at Denver last April, our warriors in green and white took to the ice and fought Boston College in a fight to the death! It was glorious! Truly worthy of song in the Halls of Kahless for generations to come!

Who am I kidding?

It was the Charge of the not-so Light Brigade, Hakstol's Last Charge, the Denver Death March. It was a massacre! It doesn't matter that we placed, or that we put the gophers in their place without the need to hurl dead animals on the ice (they wouldn't let us); what matters is that we lost and SOMEONE is to blame for it!

But who is to blame for this abysmal loss? Times have changed, our players are getting worse. They won't obey their coaches they just want to lose and curse. Should we blame the fans? Or blame society? Or should we blame the lack of coverage on TV? NO! Blame Canada! Let's blame Canada! With their curling hullabaloo and that William Shatner too!! We need to form a full assault! It's Canada's fault!!

*end South Park reference*

Yeah, blaming Canada would be a bit over the top, wouldn't it?

School spirit is essential to college life as it makes us feel better for spending $6000 on tuition ($14,000 for out-of-state) when our hockey team places in the Frozen Four. It's a great way for a sea of over 10,000 aimlessly wandering students to find some direction to follow. Rooting for our team gives us something better to do with our weekends, like embracing the Atkins diet with tailgate parties, building really ugly floats, and cursing at total strangers dressed in maroon and gold. School spirit truly is a powerful force.

However, with great power comes great responsible. Like giving a hormone-driven freshmen access to a T1 line and no parental oversight school spirit can make people do weird, if not wrong, things like blaming Canada for our loss in Denver (it's still their fault!). When you mix alcohol (especially lots of it) with school spirit, things are bound to get interesting if not downright strange. Side effects may include acute dizziness, nausea, vomiting, rioting, drunken staggering in a high school letter jacket, coyote ugly, streaking, erectile dysfunction, and... *shudders* watching Uwe Boll films. OK, so for school spirit to get out of hand one needs lots of (cheap) alcohol and a soccer hooligan mentality akin to South America and Manchester United fans but there is still the element of emotions running high.

Nowhere is this more prevalent than our rivalry with the Minnesota Gophers (Grrrrr!!). I don't know why, but I hate the gophers with every inch of my being despite the fact that I was raised a Jayhawk fan in Kansas (darn Wildcats) and later became a Cougar at Washington State University (Husky alumni bag my groceries!). Every time I see maroon and gold, it's like red to the bull and I just want to charge at whoever is wearing it whether it's an 18-year-old freshmen, an old grandma, or a grossly dressed infant. I can't explain it, I've felt this way since I got here two years ago. Guess it comes with the territory.

While excess school spirit might lead to confrontations with rivals, public indecency, wearing gosh-awful face paint, and singing fight songs that sound too much like something from high school, school spirit instills pride in our institution no matter how much they screw us over on parking. The memories of watching our team win or lose stays with us, giving us great anecdotes years later when our children ask us about our past. I can gleefully say I saw the 2003 Rose Bowl where my Cougars fought (and lost in quick succession to) Oklahoma, or about watching our hockey team at the University of North Dakota place every year that I was here. And let's face it, for a small town in a state most Americans forgot exists, we have one bad ass hockey team... so long as they're not playing Boston College that is. Next year Gadget, next year!