‘Stick It In! Stick It In! Stick It In!’

Best Seat in the House column by Chris Graham

You want to know what I think is dumb?
Sure you do. You can’t wait.
Some kids want to chant “Stick It In!” when their football team gets the ball in the proverbial red zone – and the adults want to act like wet blankets and tell them they can’t.
That’s what we have going on at Virginia Tech right now – and I think it’s plain dumb.

For those who have no idea what I’m blathering about, the band at Tech devised a ditty back in the 1990s that initiated chants from the crowd of “Oh oh oh oh-oh, Oh oh-oh …” and ended with fans imploring the home team to “Stick It In! Stick It In! Stick It In” – referring, ostensibly, to sticking the ball in the end zone, though of course there is an obvious double entendre that I don’t know that I have to go into detail about …

There. That’s it.

So now the athletics department has informed the band that it can’t play the music that initiates the chant anymore – in the name of good sportsmanship, supposedly, but it seems to me to be more censorship in the name of 1950s-style prudeness.

Come on, suits, it’s a football game – a bunch of guys in short pants and shoulder pads chasing after a ball in what amounts to glorified rugby.

It ain’t nearly as serious as we make it out to be – and neither is attending games in droves like we’re prone to do in this part of the world.

If you can’t have fun with it, then what is the point?

Or maybe that is the point.

The NFL has done its damndest to drain any and all fun out of its increasingly corporate and flavorless product.

Now we’re getting the same deal in college football.

Hmmm …

Oh, well.

I’m going to keep chanting “Stick It In! Stick It In! Stick It In!” – and yes, I’m going to giggle while doing so.

And if the Thought Police have a problem with that, so be it.

Chris Graham is the executive editor of The SportsDominion.