Best College Fight Songs, 2.0

It's football season again, when one looks forward to crisp Fall air, letter sweaters, pep band, and the good old u! rah! rah! cheer. Except right now the air is nothing even remotely crisp (100+ as I write this), bikini dance teams are more the rage than sweatered cheerleaders, and halftime shows with pyrotechnics and vocal acrobatics have replaced the marching band.

But still...

I've been nostalgically listening to my favorite CD of marches, which embeds the top tier of fight songs from a prior post. Coincidentally, I stumbled upon this old article on ESPN which purports to rank the top 50 fight songs. Like many of the commenters at the bottom of the article, I disagreed with the analysis, and it put me in mind of a more objective scoring model for ranking these things. So I am updating my prior analysis with a new 10-point scale.

To be a truly unassailably great fight song, I believe that first these three key features need to be present to even get it in the running: 

Memorable, catchy main melody

Use of relative minor & diminished chords

Showcases trombones in some clear way

If these are fully present, it's a "good" fight song.  Then, if it also has these two, it gets bonus points, and becomes top-tier:

  

Has a clear place to shout out (u-rah-rah, hail, fight, etc.)

Additional melodic section of 6+ bars

With these in mind, I developed a 9 point scale; two points for each item in the first section, and 1.5 points for the next two.  Finally, I have a category for extra points.  To help with a tiebreak, to separate the songs at the top, I would consider these features, which are more subjective:

Good use of off-time, rag or swing rhythm

Especially rousing (driving cadence, big drums, etc.)
Run-up flourishes in beginning or middle (~2 bars)

Slam-Bang ending (....."hey!")

Key change!

Each of these could get .2 of a point, and if all were present an additional point could be awarded.

So in my rankings, each category gets full credit for clear use of that feature, half credit for slight use, and 0 points for absent. 10.0 would be an ideal fight song (which doesn't exist... yet). Oh, and ... it has to be written AS a fight song, and not be a wholesale lift of some other tune (sorry, Clemson, Georgia, Tennessee, Missouri, Colorado, Oklahoma, South Carolina, A&M, etc...).  Finally, whatever I use to judge the song will take no more than 1:45 to play.  At a decent pace you can get 48 measures in that time; a fight song should be crisp.

After reviewing 60+ college fight songs (and one from the NFL!), using the above websites and others like this YouTube channel, only 13 have scored 8 or more points, and make the "good" category.  The great ones score 9 or better.

And, the winners are:

1 Columbia 9.60
2 Wisconsin 9.50
3 Michigan 9.40
4 Indiana 9.05
5 LSU 8.80
6 Notre Dame 8.75
7 Navy 8.65
T-8 Ohio St. 8.50
T-8 Illinois 8.50
10 Michigan St. 8.40
T-11 Nebraska 8.10
T-11 Northwestern 8.10
13 Syracuse 8.00

The Big 10 makes out well here (especially now that Nebraska has joined) with over half the list.  Not making the minimum of 8 points but still in the top 25 schools, deserving of honorable mention are:

14 West Virginia 7.55
15 Penn State 7.45
T-16 Princeton 6.90
T-16 Rice  6.90

T-16 Washington  6.90

19 Texas 6.70

20 Alabama  6.35 

T-21 Iowa 6.10 

T-21 AZ State  6.10 

23 USC 5.75 

24 Oregon 5.55 

T-25 Minnesota 5.40
T-25 Florida 5.40

Ole Miss also got 5.30 points, the only other school to finish 5.0 or better. (Sorry, Iowa State, Purdue, Auburn, Arkansas, Virginia, etc.)

As a side note, if NFL fight songs were eligible, the Minnesota Vikings' "Skol, Vikings, Let's Go!" would have come in 16th alone.  Not only is it a quality fight song, but it's sung in a hilarious Norwegian accent and preceded by the blowing of the Viking Horn by Ragnar, the Viking mascot.  If you ever catch a game in Minneapolis, it's not to be missed.

Alright, then.  Got my Fantasy Football team selected, rosters filled, my app downloaded... I'm ready for tailgating and TV.   Let's kick this thing off!