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Matt Starkey | PHOTO EDITOR
Rufus leads the Bobcats onto the field before kickoff in Peden Stadium October 8, 2016.
10.05.17
Even though alumni come to Ohio University to experience all of its former greatness, nothing makes someone feel more like a Bobcat than going to the annual football game.
There are plenty traditions surrounding the team that happen each year, starting on Thursday and culminating with Saturday’s game at 2 p.m. Here are five of them to take part in this Homecoming weekend.
Each year, one of the more popular events attended during homecoming week is the “Yell Like Hell” event. Held in the Baker Center parking lot Thursday night at 8:30 p.m., students and faculty gather to, well, yell. It’s a pump-up event for the football game Saturday, as well as a beginning of the Homecoming weekend as a whole.
Before the “Bobcats,” there was the Green and White. For the first 29 years after having switched school colors from blue and white, Ohio’s athletic teams weren’t nicknamed anything. Rather, they just were called the “Green and White.” How creative.
A former student came up with the nickname “Bobcats,” and he won the prize winning entry to give the teams a name. And on Dec. 7, 1925, Ohio was officially the Bobcats. The winning student, Hal. H. Rowland, was awarded $10 for coming up with the moniker.
So if you hear “Green and White” this weekend, maybe it’s not someone trying to be colorful in the way they describe their team. Maybe they’re just being historical.
For some, this is the most exciting part of the Homecoming football game. As the two teams head into halftime, fans rise to their feet as one in anticipation of what’s to come.
The Marching 110, or “the most exciting band in the land,” performs a huge set accompanied by the alumni band. It’s a fan-favorite for attendees who get to see current and former band members show off their skills and dance moves in the middle of the field.
The alumni band performance isn’t always tame, either. In 1992, the alumni band briefly scuffled with members of the Miami football team as the Marching 110 played.
Right before Ohio comes out of the tunnel, the first thing fans hear is a loud roar. It’s not the team, or the music or the roar of the crowd.
It’s Rufus, the school mascot, riding a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
The new mascot costume recognized today was unveiled Sept. 2, 2006 before a football game.
One of the more hidden, yet coolest, traditions happens after the football game ends.
At the end of the game, the football team heads over, win or lose, to the Marching 110 to sing “Alma Mater, Ohio.”
Most of the stadium has cleared out before this takes place, but this is truly one of the better traditions that not only Ohio has to offer as a school, but the athletic department has as well.
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