From Where I Sit: Tradition

Oct. 26: Revenge Tour
Oct. 19: Moving On
Oct. 12: Searching For Greatness
Oct. 5: Get Your SU Fix
Sept. 28: The Only Way to Pre-Game
Sept. 21: How Fans Are Made
Sept. 14: Emerald City Blues
Sept. 7: The End of Summer

I don't want to talk about the game. If you're a fan, you've read it all or listened to enough bloviating on the topic.

I want to talk about the crazy redhead in my section.

Whenever Syracuse gains a first down, she stands up, turns around, cups her hands around her mouth and yells “FIRST DOWN”. And in a true Pavlov-doggian response, the first five rows of my section stand and yell “ORANGE” while signaling first down with their right arms.

The next section over gives us sideways glances.

When the redhead steps out to get a beer or relieve a beer, someone takes her post. It's an important job and someone must take the baton. Why? Because it's tradition.

Is it a Syracuse tradition? No. Not unless you count the first five rows of section 329 as representative of Syracuse.

Is it an old tradition? Not really. A few seasons back, Syracuse played Virginia in Charlottesville. Every Virginia first down (and there were a lot during those dark days)… the announcer would say, “And that's another Cavalier…” and the crowd would finish his sentence by standing and cheering, “FIRST DOWN”. The next game, the dome crew tried basically the same thing. It lasted a few games and then died, because the crowd never really responded.

We basically stole Virginia's tradition. And that's okay. You know why? Because for a school that has been playing football for over 120 years, we have surprisingly few traditions.

I started thinking about this last week after I wrote about witnessing the flipping of the banner at Varsity. A handful of people asked me if that just started this year. People didn't even realize it was a tradition.

On third down, our students shake their keys. I don't understand it and it makes little sense to me, but damn if it's not a tradition— one of the few that exist in the Dome during football games.

Once Ernie's statue was raised, I thought that would spark a new tradition. I visit the statue before every game and pat his left cleat for luck, but there's very rarely anyone else around.

Most Syracusans would recognize our fight song if they heard the tune, but almost no one knows the words. We've got “Welcome to the Jungle” down pat, though.

We do nothing special for kickoffs.

The students had one chant to Gary Glitter's rock anthem and we put the kibosh on that because it had a few bad words (okay, it was mostly bad words, but at least it was catchy!).

Maybe no one cares. Maybe most haven't experienced college football games outside the Dome. All I know is tradition is one of the great things about college football, and I wish we had more of it. I wish the students had a traditions committee and worked actively on getting the entire Dome involved. I wish every section in the Dome had a crazy redhead.

Syracuse University Athletics

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