Sound and the Fury: Husker Tradition vs Saturday Night Hamburgers
This one arrived a few weeks ago, but it was during the season previews.
Dear Hawk Digest,
Last night Alisha was talking to her step-dad (a huge lifelong Husker fan). Alisha mentions that we are going to try to go to the KU football rally tonight, and he immediately says let me talk to Randy.
He goes on to pose the following question. “Let me ask you this. If your football program has or is a “tradition”, why would you need to advertise to sell tickets?” Apparently, he heard a KU football radio advertisement that made some reference to “join the tradition , get your KU football tickets now!”
His argument was that you can’t call your program a “tradition” after one nice season of football. “Tradition” means your football program is so consistently good that your tickets sell themselves. A “tradition” is selling out nearly 300 consecutive games over umpteen years….See Nebraska.
I was caught off guard and extremely annoyed by his blatant attempt to tick me off just because he could. But, I tried to defend anyway.
I tried to make the argument about KU football and not Nebraska, because I think we can pretty much agree that Nebraska football is a tradition. I tried to use a generic definition of tradition. “Something that you do over and over again.” Just like it might have been my childhood tradition to eat a hamburger dinner every Saturday night growing up, KU has fielded a KU football team every Saturday since what, 1890? I tried to argue that success does not make a tradition, and he argued otherwise.
Frustrated, I ask him why would you start sh*t at 10:00 at night. Then, I just went on to say 76-39, see ya later putz!
His query ticked me off, but it was thought provoking. So, I’m interested in your take?
Sincerely,
Married into the wrong family in Lenexa
Dear Married/Randy,
Your mother-in-law must be involved in one of those May/December romances as it is pretty clear your father-in-law is about 22 years old. That must be weird for you.
For starters, your defense is perfectly acceptable. Tradition is not necessarily defined by winning. Still, KU has put together winning seasons over the decades just often enough to keep a KU football fanbase viable and eternally hopeful. Plus, as bad as it has been at times, the campus stadium with the view of Campanile has always made Kansas football games an awesome experience. It's easier to see now with capacity crowds on hand rockin' the joint, but it's always been there for those that could tough out some heartbreaking seasons.
Speaking of which, the old warhorse -- Memorial Stadium, represents a pretty big part of the KU tradition for me. Without opening up my media guide, it was built in the 1920's and actually expanded to seat 50k in the 1960's. That kind of capacity is middle of the pack now, but the fact that interest was that high forty years ago says something in itself. I know other programs that were playing in 30k stadiums into the 90s before expanding to 50k. A couple more bowl trips and Memorial will expand to over 65,000.
I've seen the college football venues that Notre Dame, Michigan, Mizzou, KSU, Florida State, Northwestern and TCU play in and I still contend that Memorial Stadium is my favorite football stadium. To me, it represents everything that a football stadium should be. Of course, I am biased and I know that's debatable even among KU fans, but I'll stand by that one until the end.
I should also mention Gale Sayers, John Riggins, Ray Evans, Fielding Yost, Don Fambrough, Pepper Rodgers, Nolan Cromwell, Don Carlos and on and on as part of the KU tradition. Put up against Nebraska football though, that doesn't hold too much weight. However, throughout the years, I've always been told about how great Nebraska fans are. My contention is that it's pretty easy to be a fan when you're smoking through the conference in an unbalanced competition. Put an NFL team in Omaha and start up a Nebraska State University back the middle of the last century and then I'll buy in.
So, I do have to admit that it's been during this decade that Nebraska fans have actually impressed me. Will you show up when the team is brutal? Oddly enough, the Corn fans still showed up to games and kept the sellout streak alive.* In fact, I was probably most impressed to see scattered pockets of Husker fans at Memorial Stadium near the end of last year's 76-39 beatdown.
Or, if you want an easy out, you can tell your croquet-challenged father-in-law:
"Tradition is as tradition does, Mr. Lollapalooza."
Good Luck!
*With a little corporate help, here and there.
DJ Goodwin
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