Conference expansion has shifted not only the landscape of college football, but its tunes too. According to the AP, Kansas will change its fight song to edit out references to old Big Eight foes Nebraska and Colorado.
According to the AP, “If they’re not in our conference, they’re not in our fight song,” said KU Alumni Association president Kevin Corbett, summarizing the e-mails and letters he received.
Also according to the AP, “Not every school tinkers with tradition when things change, said Brandon German, whose website 1122productions.com/fightsongs features the lyrics of 428 college fight songs. The computer programmer from Birmingham, Ala., pointed out that his alma mater, Alabama, still refers to Georgia and Georgia Tech in its fight song. That’s the case even though Auburn, which gets nary a mention, is the Crimson Tide’s chief rival and meetings with the Yellow Jackets are rare nowadays. ‘The only time we might play Georgia Tech is in a bowl game,’ German said, ‘but the song was written that way and it still is tradition. People are careful about playing around with traditions that go back 100 years in a lot of cases.'” (Read the entire AP report below.)