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V.com weekend vote: Which music school would have the better football team?

February 9, 2008 at 7:23 AM

I was amused, and inspired, by the Sportsline story on Juilliard getting a football team.

It got me thinking. What if music schools really did have football teams? Which school would end up in the...Prodigy Bowl? Could my schools strings overpower your school's woodwinds? Could your school's brass beat my school's drummers?

I've compiled a list of possible contestants. None of these schools currently has a football team.

That anyone takes seriously. ;)

Which school would have the better football team?

I have no idea. I graduated from Oklahoma, which is probably more known for its football than its music (although I hear the school of music is really quite nice these days). If I had to pick, I'd choose Indiana because it's the name of a state, and it's the first one I pictured as having a football team. Since they have good basketball in Indiana, they should have good football, too.

Great logic tonight.

Well, a very good friend of mine who happens to be a phenomenal violinist played in the Marching Owl Band at Rice...but I don't know about this one. Depends on which school's students are the most viciously competitive ;)
Is this a joke? The arguments against having a team at a school like Juilliard far outweigh it all.
*far outweigh the arguments to have one.

As for the poll choices, Indiana already has a team in the Big 10 conference (D1). Granted, they didn't do too well this year, but I don't think they'll have much of a problem with the other schools.

Indiana doesn't stand a chance against Juilliard. Yo-Yo will be like Knute Rockne winning one for the Gipperov.
Hmmm, given that Northwestern University already has a football team in the Big 10, I think if the question was taken seriously then they would kick serious bottom. :)

Neil

When I was at CIM, we often joked about our lack of a football team. I did know a violinist who later played minor league baseball during the symphony "off-season".
probably a school closer to new york than mass...:)
Now, CIM DID have a softball team once:

The CIM Mudhens kicked butt. Led by Dr. Mark George (when he was a student) they did us proud.

I also played softball with David Cerone once. He pitched (of course). I was sore for a week. ;-)

Some of us get a bit more excited about college hoops...Go Big Blue!!!

As for college football, I worked at a CD store in Tallahassee when I was getting my MM at FSU. One morning, some old, sunburned guy came in, wanting to know where the Glenn Miller tapes were. (Yes, that was the 90's, when cassettes were still manufactured.) Anyhoo, I walked the guy back to the Bid Band section, and left him alone to browse. At that point, the other employees started going nuts:

"Do you know who that is?"
"Uh, some guy that wanted a Glenn Miller tape?"
"No, that is Bobby Bowden."

He was really nice, and signed a lot of autographs for anyone that wanted one. I was probably the only person in north Florida that couldn't recognize the FSU football coach!

Sorry, that should read "BIG Band". Bleh.
Ohio State has the best division 1 program of football in the United States, so I am told. So, maybe that will rub off on the Cleveland Institute of Music.
Hey, hey, HEY! Oberlin has a football team! Um, we're last in the conference, but...

...yeah. Our biggest sports are Ultimate Frisbee and rugby.

NEC doesn't have a team but they have a mascot. He is the "Fighting Penguin". If the orchestra isn't together he throws his baton at them.
There is an article in the NY Times today about this very issue. (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE7D6143DF931A35752C0A966958260).

The article reminded us of the movie Horse Feathers, in which Groucho Marks plays Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff, a man hired by Huxley University to bring a winning football team to the campus. "The trouble is...," the college president says, "we're neglecting football for education." "Have we got a stadium?" Wagstaff asks. "Yes," reply the professors." "Have we got a college?" "Yes." "Well, we can't support both. Tomorrow we start tearing down the college."

To answer Danny's question: yes, this is a joke. :) Just like my alma maters' football teams are a joke! (NU and IU) I must confess, though, that when Northwestern went to the Rose Bowl about 12 years back, Robert and I dropped everything and followed them there.
Mara,

You must be forgetting about the Oberlin Tie-dyeing team. Varsity, of course, not jr. varsity. (Those guys even have some Conservative Republicans, I hear)...

Anyway, its so inspiring to hear the team's cheerleaders chanting protests on the sidelines!
:-)

(Love and a wink to my Oberlin friends ;-)

I don't know about football, but I know a few Curtis kids that are amazing at ping-pong. :D
How come nobody has mentioned the "Mannes Maulers"? ;-)
Obviously one of the Big Ten universities, Northwestern and Indiana.
My father's nose was broken during a game with Fordam while playing on the Juilliard basketball team when the school was called The Walter Damrosch Institute of Music. Yes, they had a varsity team that played other schools' teams. He said the other teams they played were always yelling, "step on their hands."