A guy walks into a bar, sits down and has a couple of drinks.  Trying to start up conversation, he turns to the guy a few seats away sitting with his friends and says,

“Hey, you want to hear a UCLA joke?”

The man replies, “You know, I played football at UCLA as wide receiver and I don’t really wanna hear that.”

So the first man says, “Well what about your friends?”

The second man says, “Well, this guy played Linebacker at UCLA, he’s about 6’2” 230 pounds. I don’t think he wants to hear it.  And that guy played Defensive Tackle at UCLA, he’s 6’4” 280 pounds and he doesn’t want to hear it… so, do you still want to tell the joke?”

The first man says, “Nah, no thanks. I don’t want to explain it three times.”

Barry informed me that he first learned this joke while he was a student at USC in the 70s.  The background for the joke is that UCLA and USC have a heated rivalry in sports and academics, as both schools are located in the greater Los Angeles area and are very similar.  Barry explained that the joke just symbolized the intense competition between the Trojans of USC and the Bruins of UCLA.

While this joke may not represent an entire country or region’s ideas, it is still considered folklore as the folk in this case are USC students, alums, faculty, and fans in general.  Sports teams are usually followed by a large group of people who bleed their team’s colors and share a large hatred for their team’s rivals.  This same hatred between two groups is seen across many different groups and helps bind them together to create their own folklore.  Some other examples may be rival countries, states, gangs, religious groups, and many other groups as well.

Annotation:  This joke was found at:

http://lexicon.typepad.com/lexicon/usc_football/index.html