College Sports Traditions: Picking Up Butch, Silent Night, and Hundreds of Others

by Stan Beck, Jack Wilkinson

Every year since 1961, football and basketball players at Middlebury College in Vermont pick up their wheelchair-bound fan, Butch, and bring him to the stadium sidelines to watch their games. At John Brown University, the volleyball team distributes candy to fans before each match. For years, fans attending a University of Maryland football game rubbed the bronze statue of their terrapin mascot, Testudo. Traditions like these are visible statements of school loyalty, and they are part of why college sports are unforgettable.

College Sports Picking Up Butch, Silent Night, and Hundreds of Others details not only the well-known traditions of major universities, but also the obscure customs of smaller schools. Approximately 1,200 traditions are captured, covering almost every college sport. It depicts such traditions as The Ohio State University’s “Script Ohio,” University of Kansas’s “Waving the Wheat,” Linfield College’s “End Zone Couches,” and even a list of traditions that involve streaking. The wide variety of traditions covered in this book are grouped thematically,


From the crazy and eccentric to the touching and meaningful, these traditions connect fans and athletes across generations. The first of its kind, this comprehensive volume encompasses hundreds of universities and colleges throughout the U.S. Featuring 75 photos that bring many of these events to life, College Sports Traditions will be an entertaining read for every sports fan.

436 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Christina Brandsma · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was super interesting, but it is primarily a cataloged list without much commentary on the implications of these traditions. I appreciate the thoroughness and the breadth of different types of schools and traditions included.

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

College Sports Traditions: Picking Up Butch, Silent Night, and Hundreds of Others by Stan Beck & Jack Wilkinson (Scarecrow Press Inc. 2013) (796.043). This book has an interesting premise and is interesting for a short while. It quickly grows tedious, though, and there is a simple explanation as to why this is so. The authors obviously sent a questionnaire to every college sports information director in the country asking for a response as to any "sports traditions" at that college or university, even going so far as specifically asking that "intramural sports traditions" be included (there's a whole chapter on those(!)).

When the responses were received, the authors entered the responses into a database and then included every single one in their book! It doesn't sound so bad, but once one starts reading the list of "traditions," one wonders how many times it's necessary to have a separate entry for each school to report that "shaking your keys as a noisemaker" or "stomping your feet as hard as you can" as "school athletic traditions." Now, "Frank's Rock" at Clemson, "Touchdown Jesus" at Notre Dame, and "The Twelfth Man" at Texas A&M are important college sports traditions. They are unique to a single school and are immediately identifiable to most sports fans as noteworthy. Shaking your keys? Not so much.

Nice going guys; you may have maximized the number of schools with traditions you could list, but along the way you neutered a truly creative book idea.

My rating: 6/10, finished 5/29/14.

[Steve Matthews · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a bit of an encyclopedia of notes on college sports traditions with a heavy focus on the Southeast, the SEC and the ACC. There are some good stories, but it's more of a reference than the kind of book you'd want to read cover to cover at one time. It's also more of an appreciation of college traditions -- if you are looking for criticism of whether some of the focus on sports goes too far, that's not what this is about. Still, it's a pretty remarkable amount of research and some pretty compelling stories.

[Robin DuBose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love, love, love this book. It is a great covering the traditions of college sports from the well know to those only known by the schools themselves. Such a great gift.