Let’s Sit Down and Talk About Students Doing Chants
There has been a lot of discussion about the Mississippi State students’ participation in chants and songs this week. Mainly, how students have noticeably been speeding up chants past the normal set speed. Fans on both sides of the issue have been arguing for weeks. But the issue finally came to a head after this weekend. The main issue was the students seeming to speed up the national anthem towards the end of the song. This made many people mad on both
and
, and has sparked numerous threads of what is wrong and trying to figure out how to fix it. The National Anthem starts at the 4:04 mark in this video.
As a student myself, let me preface what I am about to say. I am a former band member in high school who gets annoyed with people getting off beat, and I do everything in my power to stay on tempo. I go back to my band training, and tap my toes within my shoes to keep pace. Most people, however, go with the flow of the crowd. So when a majority of the people around them are slower or faster than them, a person will adjust their tempo accordingly to fit in. The students do not all get together and decide, “Hey, let’s speed up the song! Wouldn’t that be a good laugh?” No, the students don’t intend on speeding up chants. It just happens sometimes.
So now that the problem has been identified and pointed out, what is the solution to said problem? This is where things get hard. One suggestion I have seen frequently is to change the chant that is done at kickoff. I am all for that as long as it doesn’t copy another school or sound silly. So no “Goooooooooo Dawgs! Sic ’em!” Also, get the students heavily involved on this. If you want something to take off next season (and yes, it will take until next season for something that this to happen truthfully), make it a grassroots effort involving the students. We saw the results of that with the first down chant “Hail State”. Another solution, that I consider ridiculous personally, is to do it karaoke style. What I mean by that is having the words displayed on the screen and a little ball that goes the tempo of the chant, telling everyone when to say what word. I think that gives the students and other fans the impression that we cannot handle doing it otherwise. Plus, some of our chants have language that cannot be displayed on the screens due to vulgarity. So we can go ahead and scratch that off. The last one I’ve heard is to leave it be, bite the bullet, and pray that it fixes itself. This option probably won’t make many of the ones complaining very happy, but might be the only viable option for the rest of this season.
Now that I’ve gone on this discussion, I’m sure most of you want to argue or give other suggestions. I’m down for that. I’m curious to hear your thoughts and/or suggestions on this. Do you consider it a problem? If so, how do you propose we solve it?