Could it be the all but total lack of a music/arts program in Catholic schools that causes Chief to be so upset by the presence of band kids?
Think Notre Dame football Chief and see if you don't start whistling that fight song...
I don't think anyone in any band seriously thinks that game day is about them, but music is intrinsic to a football game. OSU and the OSUMB create a larger bond for us, something beyond the game itself.
Let me 'splain: I grew up in a Unitarian church. Minimum of ritual and ceremony. I had been away from Ohio and Ohio Stadium for a number of years. My wife had never been to a college football game, had grown up Catholic, and loved ritual and had been trying to convince me to go to church and to understand the importance of ritual.
I laughed it off, "Just give me the sermon, a reading or two, let's talk it over (as we did in my childhood church) and then go home.
I talked her into going up for homecoming. We did it right. Beer at the North 'Berg and another at Larry's, watched the parade, walked around campus where I showed her all the buildings I'd had classes in, and the Sundial, Mirror Lake, and where the Armory had been and the Doughboy who never tipped his cap, blah, blah, blah.
The next day we got up early so we could see the skull session, hiked around U Hall and the library and then back to the last row of C deck where our seats were. The teams go off, the stadium grows quiet and then comes that buzz as everyone looks to see the drummers start down the ramp and I'm telling her about how each player on each side is going to hit the chalk dust marker and how they're going to start playing at 120 beats per minute and slow to 80 and then step off at 120 and how the drum major is going to run out, bend back and if he's really good he'll plant that plume in the turf, throw the baton over the goal post and catch it... blah, blah, blah and meanwhile everyone is standing and cheering and clapping and SINGING the fight song. then comes the National Anthem and again everyone is singing, then the band salutes Northwestern, then goes into the diamond Ohio formation and I hear the imitation of the Orton Hall chimes and the first notes of Carmen Ohio, and it's a perfect October day, the stadium is filled to capacity, I can look out and see Columbus and William Oxley Thompson and I'm thinking about how much I missed the school while I was away and how it will forever be in my heart and I lose it. I'm trying to sing and I can't and tears are rolling down my cheeks and my wife turns to me and says, "I thought you said you didn't like ritual."
So just as the stadium experience is not just about the band, it also isn't just about football. It holds the entire Ohio State experience together, the music, the ritual, the team, the colors, the school, the way everyone sings...
without all that around it, it's just a game.
Finally, dorks or geeks, homos or dillusional, I can think of more "band kids" I'd rather talk with than athletes, (and I taught and coached both) many of whom have a greatly exagerated sense of their value to life on earth.
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