Wednesday, January 21, 2004
Heckling Rice Owls
I received my most interesting link today when I was the result of a google search on "basketball heckling rice owls"
My first thought was, "who on earth googles for heckling tips?" This was followed closely by - "Cool, someone thinks they need to heckle us." Then I thought "what else did he find?" Well, I ran the search myself, and found this nice salute to Autry Court was #1, my link #2, and not much else.
But it raises an important question... Who needs to look up how to heckle the Rice Owls in basketball? In all my years of following Rice, and watching many games on foreign soil (especially here in Austin), I cannot recall a single good Rice heckle. I recall some Aggies calling us "Wheat" or "Barley", generic "You Stink" but that's about it. The reason for this is that, frankly, in the past, they have not been needed. Rice usually elicits sympathy over ire from opposing fans as we took our beating in went home.
In fact, most of the Rice cheers are actually self-heckling in disguise. "We scored first!" or "We scored last!" was a favorite in 40+ point football defeats and "That's alright that's okay you're gonna work for us someday" always worked in a pinch.
But if I had to give help...
You could pick on our size - Rice is the smallest Divison I-A football school with fewer than 3000 undergraduate students.
You could pick on our location - Houston is humid as Hell, but with worse traffic
You could pick on our alcohol habits - Rice has two on-campus pubs and for a long time was the second largest consumer of Shiner beer in Texas next to the Astrodome. Heck even our fight song is punctuated by the line - "Stand! Cheer! Drink More Beer!"
You could pick on our insecurity - Rice still defines itself in terms of upsets of University of Texas. Our rain-soaked 19-17 football win over UT in 1994 is our greatest football moment. Even the 2003 NCAA baseball championship resulted in the student association putting out a commemorative shirt that said "I wasn't in Omaha, but neither was Texas"
You could pick on our geekiness - We are nerds and proud of it. Here's a classic Rice cheer...
E to the x, dy, dx,
E to the x, dx!
Secant, tangent, cosine, sine,
Three-point-one-four-one-five-nine,
Square root, cube root, BTU,
Compass, Slide rule, Go Rice U.!
I'll be listening closely to the Fresno State game on Thursday to see what this surfer comes up with. If you have any good Rice heckles, contact me, I'd love to hear them.
My first thought was, "who on earth googles for heckling tips?" This was followed closely by - "Cool, someone thinks they need to heckle us." Then I thought "what else did he find?" Well, I ran the search myself, and found this nice salute to Autry Court was #1, my link #2, and not much else.
But it raises an important question... Who needs to look up how to heckle the Rice Owls in basketball? In all my years of following Rice, and watching many games on foreign soil (especially here in Austin), I cannot recall a single good Rice heckle. I recall some Aggies calling us "Wheat" or "Barley", generic "You Stink" but that's about it. The reason for this is that, frankly, in the past, they have not been needed. Rice usually elicits sympathy over ire from opposing fans as we took our beating in went home.
In fact, most of the Rice cheers are actually self-heckling in disguise. "We scored first!" or "We scored last!" was a favorite in 40+ point football defeats and "That's alright that's okay you're gonna work for us someday" always worked in a pinch.
But if I had to give help...
You could pick on our size - Rice is the smallest Divison I-A football school with fewer than 3000 undergraduate students.
You could pick on our location - Houston is humid as Hell, but with worse traffic
You could pick on our alcohol habits - Rice has two on-campus pubs and for a long time was the second largest consumer of Shiner beer in Texas next to the Astrodome. Heck even our fight song is punctuated by the line - "Stand! Cheer! Drink More Beer!"
You could pick on our insecurity - Rice still defines itself in terms of upsets of University of Texas. Our rain-soaked 19-17 football win over UT in 1994 is our greatest football moment. Even the 2003 NCAA baseball championship resulted in the student association putting out a commemorative shirt that said "I wasn't in Omaha, but neither was Texas"
You could pick on our geekiness - We are nerds and proud of it. Here's a classic Rice cheer...
E to the x, dy, dx,
E to the x, dx!
Secant, tangent, cosine, sine,
Three-point-one-four-one-five-nine,
Square root, cube root, BTU,
Compass, Slide rule, Go Rice U.!
I'll be listening closely to the Fresno State game on Thursday to see what this surfer comes up with. If you have any good Rice heckles, contact me, I'd love to hear them.
