Episode 3: “Building Spirit is Only Part of Yell Leader Job” (originally aired Spring 1974)

“Have you ever seen the Loupot’s Handbook?” Lasley said.

From his Yell Leader election in 1972 to graduation in 1974, Lasley never set foot on the field without a battered maroon book in his pocket. The handbook contained years’ worth of yells. The author? Judson Loupot, owner of Loupot’s Bookstore.

“Go across to Northgate,” Williford said. “Somebody was showing us pictures. It’s not there anymore. I think it’s a bar. But when we were here, Loupot’s was where everybody went to buy brass, everything for uniforms and all that. Loupot graduated in 1932 and loved it. On the tile, there’s still ‘Loupot’s come the Aggies’ or something like that. That’s where everybody shopped.”

Back then, according to Williford, every student had a copy of the Loupot’s Handbook free of charge.

“You could just get one,” Williford said. “And if you couldn’t afford books, Loupot would kind of carry your finance.”

Lasley doesn’t know if Yell Leaders still carry the handbook. To him, it’s as much a part of the uniform as their coveralls. He’s witnessed each new group of Yell Leaders since his tenure — and each little change.

“We have a Yell Leader reunion every 10 years,” Lasley said. “They line us up from oldest to youngest of the Yell Leaders. The old guys get down here, and they do everything kind of bent over. And then the guys now do, I call them ‘pirouettes.’”

But even though Lasley doesn’t love the shift in style, he said he was always destined to find something wrong.

“My dad is Class of ‘42, and J.O. Alexander was the Yell Leader in his class,” Lasley said. “After a ballgame, I’d go see my dad, and all his old buddies was there. And J.O. stood about it so hot, talking about ‘When you guys gonna learn how to do yells?’ So that’s been going on forever. The old guys never think the new guys are doing it right.”