Midweek Musings: Conjuring up Some Chants.

What makes me me proud of student sections? Creativity and dedication. As far as dedication is concerned, I have been very impressed with the football students section this year. They refuse to leave in the rain, the heat, when we are being crushed, or even when the game is over. I don't think they would have stuck around like that last year. This is a definite improvement. As far as creativity is concerned, though. They are somewhat lacking. What are their rivalry chants? "F*** the Irish," of "F*** Ohio State," they are uncreative and offensive, and they are mostly offensive because they are non-creative. Some people praise swear-words because they can be used in almost any context, and even as almost every word in a sentence. I find that profanity tends to oversimplify sentences and never fully express the complexity of the sentiment that one is trying to convey. Now, we here at Michigan can be loud, proud and creative. Our ice hockey student section is notorious. Also, as I have discovered our volleyball and soccer student sections are good at coming up with chats as well. Why is football so bad? I am guessing because it is the sheer size of the student section along with the fact that many students are only marginally interested in football. Also the noise tends to drown out anything creative.
Still, I believe that we need to come up with some good stuff. Let us take our upcoming game against EMU. Now, personally, I have nothing against EMU, and many EMU fans are  Michigna fans as well. Still we can work something in there. We can refer to them as the "Rodney Dangerfield" of division one, because they get no respect. We could taunt their mascot, "You had a cool mascot, but you got Shanghaied, by an overly powerful politically correct movement, and instead of choosing an obvious awesome replacement, the emu, you chose one of the most generic mascots in the country, so ha." I admit that it needs some work, but maybe we could go with "Boring mascot." in the meantime.
What also need are some good rivalry chants. "Bust their nuts," would be great against Ohio State. Other ones could be, "Nice Tattoo," or possibly, "Where's the vest."
I guess we have a few good rivalry chants with "Little brother," and "Worst State Ever." But we can always do more. I mean, when is the last time we taunted Notre Dame about their Lucky Charms?

Other things we could do is possibly make some things a little more relevant. Personally, the chant I hate the most is the "You suck," chant. What has been worse about it in recent years is that we usually chanted it while we were loosing a game. If they suck, but they are crushing us, what does that say about us?  Personally, I am all about being sarcastically positive towards the other team. While telling them "Good job," or, "You're OK," might not catch on, I like the idea of a condescending applause (with no voices) when we stop a drive. another option is "Better luck next time." How about , "Punt that ball?" I'm just saying, its a lot more amusing to taunt a team by being condescending, than it is to insult them.