David Dill, Class of 1982, is a former B-52 aircraft commander and is currently working as a mechanical engineer in the packaging machine industry.
Fellow Ags,
Do you care about Bevo anymore? Is he even on your radar? I don’t know about you, but I’m more than ready to fully move forward, up and away from our old and outdated rivalry with TU, and instead embrace a more relevant rival, Louisiana State University. (Notice I didn’t even go to the trouble of writing TU in lower case; who still cares about them?) I mean we play LSU the last football game of the year, and they’ve got a lot of comparable fanatical (even insane) fans. Did you see them open-pit barbecue an actual alligator before their game with Florida? Those are the kind of fans with whom I’d like to rival it up. They’d be a whole lot more fun to poke fun at than (yawn) TU. Also, TU has made more of a rivalry with OU than us regardless (which was the case even during SWC days). They’ve always treated us with contempt, and I think letting them be our rival is an honor and privilege that they no longer deserve and haven’t for a long time. Now, such an official rivalry change would involve a few changes.
Our fight song would include changes such as “Goodbye to Louisiana State University, so long to the yellow and the white.” (Maybe to flow better, we could shorten it to “LS University” or something else.) “‘Hey, Fighting Tigers, fight all the way,’ that is the song they sing so well …” And instead of “saw varsity’s horns off,” “cut varsity’s claws off” (or I guess we could still saw their claws off).
As far as I can tell, LSU has no real rival. Alabama has Auburn. Ole Miss has Mississippi State; I think even Arkansas appears to have something now going with Missouri. And New Orleans is just a seven-hour drive from College Station, and only about an hour and a half from Baton Rouge. Even if a group of Ags left the campus at the end of the school day on Friday, they could still arrive in the French Quarter with plenty of nightlife time left (or stop in Baton Rouge for their nightlife). We could even have a mini Midnight Yell Practice in Jackson Square, possibly starting a new tradition there.
Speaking of, I’m envisioning some other new traditions before home games. Barbecuing a tiger is probably going a little too far, but what about letting Reveille chase a yellow cat (with a purple bow on its neck) across the field (or maybe a collie pup, “Reveille Jr.,” chasing a cute little yellow kitten)?; grilling tiger shrimp at tailgate parties; making a large pinata-like tiger to be placed in front of the cannon and blow it away. (We could even have the tiger’s mouth trying to swallow the muzzle!) Maybe we could replace Bonfire with something less dangerous. Gathering wood as before, but instead recreating a small jungle on the campus with a caged fake tiger in it and burn all that down.
I’m sure others have creative new tradition ideas which could be submitted to The Battalion and possibly voted on. As noted, LSU fans are crazy, so I’m sure they’ll come up with some good retaliatory traditions on their own that would enhance the rivalry (and make for some good laughs too). The whole thing could quickly escalate from just a college rivalry to an interstate rivalry involving politicians, which would make the tension before the last game even better.