The main chorus of The Aggie War Hymn isn't original music. It's an old ragtime era song, but not rag music, called "Hello, My Coney Island Baby". That's the melody. I saw Tony Orlando (yeah, THAT Tony Orlando) perform once on television. I once spied a barber shop quartet in Cleveland singing it on local TV. I figure old Wilson heard the piece in New York before shipping out to France and calculated it would be the perfect backdrop for verses really insulting to Teasippers.
It truly is a "shoot the lights out" kind of work: music to bar-fight by. Musically, the Band has a lot of respect for it. There's not much goofing around. Just play the music. The baritones, and reeds have a couple of features, up and down runs that connect phrases. The trombones do not embellish but provide a downward tracking backbone, one note per beat where the rest of the Band has two. The drum cadence alone qualifies as a dangerous weapon. Just for effect, the Band plays it twice. The student body sings the second verse twice, "Good bye to Texas University" Good luck for the Aggies.