Traditions
The "fight song" of the University of Oklahoma is "Boomer Sooner", a version of "Boola Boola", the fight song of Yale University, combined with a version of "I'm a Tar Heel Born", the fight song of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "Boomer Sooner" was written by Arthur M. Alden in 1905. Other songs played at athletic events by The Pride of Oklahoma Marching Band are a version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Oklahoma!", "OK Oklahoma", played after extra points, and the "OU Chant." At home games, The Pride of Oklahoma Marching Band plays that visiting team's "fight song" while facing their fans.
The Mascot present at all football games is the Sooner Schooner, a Conestoga wagon, pulled by two crème white ponies, Boomer and Sooner. The caretakers of the wagon are the spirit group called the RUF/NEKS, who shoot off modified shotguns in celebration of scores by the home team. The group was launched in 1915 when an elderly female spectator at an OU-Oklahoma A&M basketball game chided the group for raising hell ("Sit down and be quiet, you roughnecks!")
Recently, in time for the 2005 football season, two new mascots, based on the ponies who pull the Schooner, were created, named appropriately, Boomer and Sooner. They are costumes of two identical (except for eye color) crème white ponies. Before, the Boomer and Sooner costume mascots, OU was also represented by Top Dawg. Top Dawg did some appearances at football games, but was primarily used at wrestling and basketball events.
The official school colors are Crimson and Cream, with red and white sometimes used as substitutes for simplicity. The school logo is an interlocking OU design and was first used on football helmets in 1967.
Read more about this topic: Oklahoma Sooners
Famous quotes containing the word traditions:
“... the more we recruit from immigrants who bring no personal traditions with them, the more America is going to ignore the things of the spirit. No one whose consuming desire is either for food or for motor-cars is going to care about culture, or even know what it is.”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)
“Napoleon never wished to be justified. He killed his enemy according to Corsican traditions [le droit corse] and if he sometimes regretted his mistake, he never understood that it had been a crime.”
—Guillaume-Prosper, Baron De Barante (1782–1866)
“But generally speaking philistinism presupposes a certain advanced state of civilization where throughout the ages certain traditions have accumulated in a heap and have started to stink.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)