Tag Archives: rivalry

“That Team Up North”

Slang term for the Michigan Wolverines college football team used by fans and members of the Ohio State Buckeyes college football team.

First encountered by informant while watching College Gameday for one of the yearly Ohio State-Michigan football games.

One of the many indicators of the sustained antipathy that exists between Michigan and Ohio State fans, the phrase “That Team Up North” was coined by Woody Hayes – Ohio State’s famed football coach from 1951 through 1978 – at an uncertain point in his tenure. Hayes coined it because he so detested Michigan that he refused to say their name. Nearly forty years after Hayes’s death, the Ohio State fanbase – one of college football’s largest – still uses “That Team Up North” in everyday parlance for the exact same reason.

School Sports Chant

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Claremont, CA
Language: English

Text: “Puck Fomona”

Context: A. told me about how people at Scripps College, Harvey Mudd College, and Claremont McKenna College say this at sports games. It’s to cheer against Pomona College. It switches the first letters of “Fuck Pomona” to “Puck Fomona.” They do this so they can express the rivalry without outright profanity. A. is a part of Scripps College.

Analysis: This phrase is a competitive sports chant that reinforces healthy rivalry between Claremont-Mudd-Scripps and Pomona-Pitzer. It’s a unique phrase within the community as it is only used in games between the two teams, who are part of a larger school consortium of the five schools. Chanting this strengthens the CMS group identity and fosters school spirit. It lets students actively participate in traditions within the community.

Tale of Two Brothers – Tale

Nationality: Korean American
Age: 18
Occupation: Hotel Clerk/Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 28 March 2023
Primary Language: English
Language: Korean

Context:

G is a Korean American freshman studying Computer Science at USC. She has heard this story from her mother, who was born and raised in Korea but moved to Hawaii. That’s where G lived before she came to USC. According to G, her mom has told her this story countless times, and it is a very popular and well-known story.

Text:

There were two brothers, Heungbu and Nolbu, and they were both from a rich family. Nolbu is the older brother, he’s very greedy. The younger brother is Heungbu and he’s very kind. When their father died and it was time to split the fortune he left behind, the older brother takes everything. But, Heungbu is nice, so he doesn’t fight back or anything. He just accepts it.

There was a baby bird, a swallow. There was a snake trying to eat the swallow. Heungbu chased the snake away, saving the swallow. The baby bird had a broken leg, and Heungbu treated it for him. Three days later, the swallow got better, left, and came back with pumpkin seeds. So, Heungbu plants it in his backyard and when it was time to harvest, the pumpkin was full of treasure and gold.

The rumor spread that Heungbu became wealthy. His brother, the greedy one, asks him how he got so wealthy. Heungbu tells his brother. When Nolbu sees a swallow, he purposefully breaks the swallow’s leg and then heals it. The swallow comes back with pumpkin see, and when it was time to harvest, goblins came out of the pumpkin beating up his children and taking his fortune away.

Analysis:

This tale outlines two very stark characters in close contrast to showcase a logical sequence of events that follow their lives. Tales travel along the supernatural and realistically impossible, operating on events and logic that do not apply in the real world. There is no pumpkin seed in the world that can summon treasure and gold, or goblins (goblins do not exist or been questioned to exist like a yeti would be in a legend). There is no animal (real world entity) that is magical enough to differentiate magical pumpkin seeds, like that swallow. The objects of the folktale on which the plot occurs and the characters are propelled are illogical and extraordinary, an irrefutable kind of “not real” that occurs in a world that is not our own. However, though the events and plot devices themselves are not real or rational, what is logical is the actions of the characters caused by the devices. According to Oring, a “tale’s climax is the logical result of an episodic sequence.” Heungbu’s kindness and benevolence is met with Nolbu’s greed and malevolence, earning both of them respective consequences based on the caliber of morality their distinctive personalities the real world’s principles hold them in. These characters are unchanging and idle to exaggerate those social noems. It is accepted that kindness earns respect and good fortune, and as Korean culture is mostly dictated by Confucian values, Heungbu’s loyalty to his family in spite of his brother’s mistakes makes him a template of good character for Korean culture. Nolbu is the opposite; insensitive to family, uncooperative, and endlessly greedy, hence a moral villain for his Korean audience. This tale engineers Korean culture values into a supernatural order of events that follow a logical reasoning, so that the resolution is not only predictable for the audience but inevitable and therefore applicable in metaphor in real life.

Keying Cars and High School Rivalry

Text:

“We (Los Gatos High School) had a big rivalry with this high school called Palo Alto High School. It wasn’t a fun rivalry like USC and UCLA. People would get in fights and stuff. Our high school would key their cars and we couldn’t go to their sports games [because the rivalry was so intense]. Los Gatos kids just liked to key people’s cars and the seniors even keyed the junior’s cars one time.”

Context:

EK is a 19 year old American student at USC. She described the culture at her high school and around the rivalry between her high school and a neighboring one. She was raised in Northern California. 

Interpretation:

It is always interesting to me to hear the different ways that high school rivalries proliferate. While my high school had “big rivals” we would never escalate to anything physical or any property damage. Something like keying cars and being known for that is an example of how deep these rivalries can run – often with unknown origins. People hate another town/school simply because that’s the way it’s always been done, and it comes to a head during sports games and other competitions of that nature. Subcultures, like keying cars, can develop out of that rivalry. 

Trojan Knights: Victory Bell Rivalry

Nationality: Jewish, American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4 May 2021
Primary Language: English

Context: UCLA and USC are both in LA, easily turning them into rivals for most of their history. Trojan Knights member and previous Archivist MF describes the tradition of the Victory Bell and the Knights’ role in its folklore. 

Main Piece: The origin of the Victory Bell was in 1939 when it was presented to UCLA from their alumni association as a gift. The UCLA spirit team would bring it to every game and would ring it after every point scored for the next few seasons. MF says that “this was back when USC and UCLA both used the Coliseum as their field, so some Knights pretended to be a part of their spirit team and they helped them load up the bell… and they got the keys and stole the bell.” After the Knights stole the bell for USC, they hid it around LA and made it a tradition so they could prevent UCLA from reclaiming it. The bell has supposedly been hidden in “a fraternity basement, Hollywood Hills, Santa Anna, and at one point under a haystack, kind of being hidden everywhere to try and keep UCLA from getting it back.” 

The theft of the Victory Bell began a prank war between USC and UCLA. MF recounts that a UCLA student dropped manure from a plane onto USC campus. In retaliation, some USC students printed thousands of fake issues of UCLA’s weekly newspaper which praised USC. The students then replaced all of the real newspapers with their fake ones. The presidents of both universities realized the harm that the war was doing to the city and the student body, so they put an end to it by establishing an agreement that, at the rivalry game every year, whoever won would get the bell (and if there was a tie, whoever had it before would keep it). This was a peaceful resolution to the prank war, and it also renewed the Knights’ direct role in the tradition of the Victory Bell.

The Trojan Knights have the responsibility of bringing the bell onto the field and presenting it to the rival team whenever they play. They also keep the bell in hiding rather than in Heritage Hall, where USC stores its other trophies. The Victory Bell’s tradition was originally to keep it hidden, so MF stated that it would be inappropriate to flaunt it. As a part of the tradition of the bell’s transfer, Whenever USC gets it, they paint its frame Cardinal red, and when UCLA gets it, they strip the paint and paint it blue. In addition, whenever USC gets the bell, the Knights do a Bell Tour, where they bring it to every event they can, from other sports events to incoming student orientations. 

Thoughts: The Victory Bell adds some legitimacy to the otherwise arbitrary importance of USC’s rivalry with UCLA. Because either school can take pride in a full year with the Victory Bell, it becomes a special kind of trophy that makes winning more exciting and losing all the more painful. I think that the Knight’s role in the tradition of the Victory Bell, though they may merely be its bearers, is an important one. They are still the organization at USC that interacts the most with its traditions, and their school spirit can be a unifying force for the whole student body.