This week offered a Women's World Cup match (and victory, fittingly, over England) just days before the Fourth of July. Watching the game - and naturally, imagining marching bands in that context - got me thinking: Which of our national songs are analogous to school spirit songs?
I first shied away from the Star Spangled Banner as our fight song, mostly because its time signature makes it difficult to march or clap along to. But beyond that, in form and function, as much as I wanted to give the gig to Stars and Stripes Forever, the Anthem is it.
Our alma mater? America the Beautiful. It extols the beauty of our "campus," uses its thees and thys in all the right places, and borrowed its tune from an older hymn.
And don't worry, there's still a home for our national march. Stars and Stripes Forever can occupy that secondary fight song/spirit song spot like NC State's Red and White or Georgia Tech's Up with the White and Gold.
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