Media Credit: kevin buehler / The Daily Utah Chronicle My two colleagues and I were terrified as we stumbled upon the worshipping ground of the Texas A&M football faithful. Posted on 09/11/2003 10:35:49 AM PDT by Recourse
Cult! Fear and loathing in College Station
By Chris Bellamy
Media Credit: kevin buehler / The Daily Utah Chronicle My two colleagues and I were terrified as we stumbled upon the worshipping ground of the Texas A&M football faithful.
I tried to escape. Honest, I did. But believe me when I tell you, I didn't know what the hell was going on. What was happening around me was dumbfounding, disturbing, frightening.
I don't know what it was that compelled me to stay. Maybe it was fear. Maybe it was my obscene sense of curiosity. Maybe it was the smell.
Whatever the reason, last Friday night I found myself, along with my co-workers Asad Kudiya and Kevin Buehler, in probably the most peculiar situation of my life.
Cannons were firing. People were chanting. They were gyrating in unison. My God, they were doing synchronized pushups!
This was called "The Yell," and I found myself unwittingly and unintentionally thrown into the middle of it. It was there that I began to discover just what College Station, Texas was all about-and I'm not exaggerating when I say it may have changed my life forever.
More than 30,000 Aggie fans crowded the streets outside the stadium just before midnight last Friday, as they do before every home game, ready to take part in this massive pre-game pep rally.
Now, I had always heard about cults. I had even seen a few documentaries on them on The Learning Channel. Heaven's Gate. Jim Jones and The People's Temple.
But never had I seen a cult up close and personal until we settled into our places in Kyle Field Friday night.
It started with the pushups. Then it was the "Fighting Aggie War Hymn," a tune repeated ad nauseam all night long, one that still rings in my head at this very hour.
Hullabaloo, Caneck, Caneck. Hullabaloo, Caneck, Caneck. All hail to dear old Texas A&M...
Then it got weird. A group of young men, wearing matching overalls, took center stage down on the sidelines as the raucous crowd suddenly hushed. The men began leading these Aggie faithful in chants, cheers and the reading of Masonic verses.
And everyone knew exactly what to do-and when to do it. They knew what every hand gesture meant. They knew every word of every chant and every song.
Everyone except us, of course. We, visitors from Utah, did not belong. We did not have the ceremony down by heart. But we did what we were told. What else could we do?
"I was confused...and scared," a genuinely shaken Asad told me afterward. "I felt like if I didn't do what they were doing, they were going to rape me."
We leaned over and bowed our heads with the rest of them. We repeated those infernal chants and sang the praises of the Aggie gods. We leaped up and threw our hands in the air, and praised the Good Laaaaawwwwd, as the four men down in front declared a Jihad on the Utah Ute football team.
Beat the hell out of Utah, they chanted. Beat the hell out of Utah!!
The four Yell leaders wailed on the microphone and told the crowd to Riiiiiise Up! They made a strange, Hitler-looking gesture to the crowd, and all of a sudden the people around us threw their arms around us and we all began to sway from side to side, singing that war hymn...and it was then that I realized that everyone was speaking in tongues.
Hullabaloo, Caneck, Caneck. Hullabaloo, Caneck, Caneck. We're gonna beat you all to Chigaroogarem. Chigaroogarem. Rough, tough, real stuff, Texas A&M!
My memory is a little fuzzy, but if I remember correctly, everyone around us was wearing long, white cloaks and burning candles. And If I'm not mistaken, there was a virgin sacrifice as well.
Strange and terrible things began happening inside me. These people had been brainwashed, I was sure of it...but...I kind of liked it. I was oddly titillated by the whole experience, ashamed as I am to admit that.
I was conflicted. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I loved them and loathed them. I was repulsed, yet mysteriously drawn to their sick, twisted game, comforted by this theatre of mass worship, this cornucopia of rabid fan psychosis. It was like a KKK gathering on mushrooms.
Talk about worshipping false idols. This was just for the football team, for Pete's sake. The football team!
The U football team sometimes struggles to get 35,000 fans at the actual game-A&M got that many for the pep rally. On a late Friday night, no less. These kids should have been getting wasted, having sex and walking around town in a drunken stupor stealing stop signs and falling asleep in public fountains.
But no-at half past midnight, they were at the football stadium, worshipping Dennis Franchione while four boys in overalls did their best impression of an Episcopal sermon.
I'd never seen anything like this place. None of us had.
I mean, what can you say about a town that simultaneously symbolizes everything that is right about college football, and everything that's wrong about our nation's educational system?
But it wasn't just the football fans-the whole town of College Station was ass-backward.
The place was littered with the scary but aptly named Crickets on Steroids with Wings, which may or may not have been the apocalyptic, flesh-eating bugs prophesied in the Bible.
The night desk clerk at our hotel was named Lucifer. Everyone in town drove a maroon-colored pickup truck. The uniform code at every business establishment was an Aggies T-shirt. The school marching band looked uncannily like the Third Reich. We went to a bar where people actually played darts for hours and hours on end. Who does that?!
Small things, I know. But after our experience Friday night, every little thing made the town seem all the more strange.
When we left "The Yell" Friday night, none of us could speak. What the hell just happened, we all thought to ourselves. That wasn't just school spirit-it was something different altogether. Those people were just...different. If this wasn't a cult, I didn't know what was.
The experience of College Station was an odd one. To tell you the truth, I'm just glad I got out of there alive. Hopefully, the place didn't rub off on me.
Hullabaloo, caneck, caneck. Chigaroogarem. Chigaroogarem.
cbellamy@chronicle.utah.edu
If you would look you would see that my post was specifically in reply to #9.
I attended Texas Tech for a year in the '60s. It cost me a small fortune to have my car repainted and the glass replaced, and my teeth have never been the same.
Lighten up.
LOL, how true, how true.
"Somebody had took and drawed white lines all over it and drove posts in it, and I don't know what all, and I looked down there and I seen five or six convicts a running up and down and a-blowing whistles . And then I looked down there and I seen these pretty girls wearin' these little bitty short dresses and a-dancing around, and so I thought I'd sit down and see what it was that was a-going to happen."
"About the time I got set down good I looked down there and I seen thirty or forty men come a-runnin' out of one end of a great big outhouse down there and everybody where I was a-settin' got up and hollered! And I asked this fella that was a sittin' beside of me, "Friend, what is it that they're a-hollerin' for? Well, he whopped me on the back and he says, "Buddy, have a drink!" I says, "Well, I believe I will have another big orange. I got it and set back down."
"When I got there again I seen that the men had got in two little bitty bunches down there real close together, and they voted. They elected one man apiece, and them two men come out in the middle of that cow pasture and shook hands like they hadn't seen one another in a long time. Then a convict came over to where they was a-standin', and he took out a quarter and they commenced to odd man right there! After a while I seen what it was they was odd-manning for. It was that both bunchesfull of them wanted this funny lookin little pumpkin to play with. And I know, friends, that they couldn't eat it because they kicked it the whole evenin' and it never busted."
"Both bunchesful wanted that thing. One bunch got it and it made the other bunch just as mad as they could be! Friends, I seen that evenin' the awfulest fight that I ever have seen in all my life !! They would run at one -another and kick one- another and throw one another down and stomp on one another and griiind their feet in one another and I don't know what- all and just as fast as one of 'em would get hurt, they'd take him off and run another one on !! ..."
Andy Griffith
What it was, was football - 1953
No fights, but the continual blowing grit in everything kept enough abrasive in my mouth to treat my tooth enamel as badly as it did the paint on my car.
I am from the land of green grass and big oak trees, south of Houston. I was just never comfortable with the climate. When the humidity drops below 70% I get panicky.
The people are friendly, but then they are in most of Texas.
First of all, there won't be a sip victory. Second of all, you left out the most important facts: the sips were on the field -- i.e. breaking the law, trespassing, etc., and were told to get off. Third, I can guarantee that if YOU go on the field, you will get beaten up -- rather badly, either by me or by others willing to protect our turf. If you don't enjoy pain, don't go on our field.
And get your facts straight while you are at it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
