Nitty Gritty of Breaking a Guinness World Record

Finally, after years of unofficially setting the world record for most cowbells rung in unison, Mississippi State has decided to get the Guinness folks out to Davis Wade Stadium and officially break the record. But many have asked, even our writer who wrote the story, why not do it at a game and completely demolish the record?

Simply put, it isn’t that simple to break a record.

Yes, there are Guinness World Records for some of the silliest things you can think of. The fact there is a Guinness World Record for cowbells being rung simultaneously is kind of silly to be quite honest. But regardless of how silly you might think a record is, Guinness takes putting their official stamp of approval on something very seriously. According to Business Insider, over 50,000 records are submitted each year, but only about, 1,000 of those records make it into the official record book published each year.

After Andrew published his piece, he received an email about what it took to set a record on such a large scale as this one. Here is what Mississippi State is going to have to do to have this record be officially given to the school.

• A CPA firm brought in to have a Guinness World Record approved numbering system to count and verify the number in attendance
• A steward for every 50 participants to observe and verify to the Guinness Adjudicator in attendance that all 50 of their assigned participants did ring the bell during the entire process.
• Security at each entrance and exit to insure no participant leaves during the attempt and verify this to the adjudicator.
• It’s not required by Guinness, but they recommend a roped off area for the people in attendance without cowbells so all the previous guidelines are more easily kept.

It’s important to know I haven’t seen these guidelines come straight from Guinness. This simply came from one of our readers. But I am almost positive he’s correct because there is a huge database of FAQs at the Guinness World Records website. And sorting through all of that is no simple task.

Rhett Hobart helped clarify this earlier today. Here is what he said when asked about why this couldn’t be done at the LSU game.

The reader estimated all the costs associated with breaking this record at $15,000. The environment has to be controlled as much as possible, and at that cost, you want to make sure you get it right. At a football game, there is the business of actually playing a football game that takes priority. There will probably be multiple attempts throughout Cowbell Yell to ensure the record is attained. Doing this at a game is a much higher risk and simply can’t be controlled like it can at Cowbell Yell.

So yes, we could try to do this at a game and completely demolish the record. But when you think about how stringent the people at Guinness are about making sure certain guidelines are followed, it makes a lot more sense to do it at Cowbell Yell. Either way, Mississippi State will finally be the official Guinness World Record holder for a record we’ve unofficially owned for decades.

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