Photo courtesy of Auburn athletics
Welcome back to the eighth of 13 installments where we rank all 130 FBS fight songs!
BACKGROUND
Fight songs are one of, if not the, best parts of college athletics. Everyone knows their university’s fight song.
Each week, 10 teams will be covered, starting with No. 130, and ending with the No. 1 fight song. This is designed to carry fans past the midway point of the darkness that is the FBS offseason.
This is perhaps the most subjective ranking list you’ll read all offseason. Any and all feedback can be directed to @CJOlson2000 on Twitter — whether it be positive or negative. But also remember that this is one man’s opinions on fight songs.
Also, even the worst fight songs are still enjoyable; they just are worse than their counterparts.
This took close to eight hours to complete, and that’s before turning it into 13 weekly articles. If someone is upset and feels so inclined, they’re welcome to listen and then grade all 130 FBS fight songs. It could be made into a weekly activity that’s updated as articles are published.
Lastly, there’s a possibility that the wrong song was used. If the wrong song was considered for a team and it negatively impacted their ranking, we are very sorry.
CRITERIA CONSIDERED
There were three factors considered for each team’s fight song.
1. FLOW
Did the song flow from beginning to end in a smooth way? This was given a weight of 25%.
The average flow score was 6.7016.
2. CROWD FACTOR
Is the crowd getting into it? Fight songs are designed to engage the crowd and get the crowd going, because this is the purpose of a fight song; this was given a 50% weight.
The average crowd factor score was 6.7137.
3. NOSTALGIA/FEEL-GOOD FACTOR
How much does this trigger the nostalgia of someone who put thousands of hours into NCAA football video games back when they had fight songs in the main menu?
Some teams newer to FBS do have a little bit of a disadvantage here. To make up for that, there is also a ‘feel-good factor’ incorporated. Fight songs should give listeners a great feeling, hence the reason for this category.
It’s fairly self-explanatory, but also the most subjective of the categories. This was given a 25% weight.
The average nostalgia/feel-good score was 6.8189.
The average overall score was 6.7370.
As a disclaimer, this final category was where biases shone through the most. For the first two categories, an attempt to be as unbiased as possible was made.
To avoid ties as best as possible, each factor’s score is given to four decimal places. Even with that, there was coincidentally two ties.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Lyrics and vocals were not considered unless it dominates the song and is what is predominantly coming across for a brief section. To remain uniform across the board, vocals and lyrics were only considered for these brief sections instead of for the full song.
PREVIOUS ARTICLES
If you’re interested in reading the rankings revealed so far without going through individual articles, that can found here.
Let’s get back to the rankings!
60. San Jose State
| Flow | Crowd Factor | Nostalgia/Feel Good | Overall | |
| Rating | 6.6494 | 7.0040 | 6.8811 | 6.8846 |
| Rank (Conf.) | 73/130 (7/12) | 56/130 (6/12) | 66/130 (5/12) | 60/130 (5/12) |
Way too much spelling and the first half feels a little disconnected from the second half. Other than that, an overall solid showing from a top-5 song in the Mountain West.
59. Oregon State
| Flow | Crowd Factor | Nostalgia/Feel Good | Overall | |
| Rating | 6.2481 | 7.0115 | 7.3175 | 6.8972 |
| Rank (Conf.) | 84/130 (9/12) | 54/130 (5/12) | 46/130 (4/12) | 59/130 (5/12) |
A catchy tune, to say the last. The end is a little disjointed, so it gets dinged on flow but adds some credit for the crowd factor rating.
58. Colorado
| Flow | Crowd Factor | Nostalgia/Feel Good | Overall | |
| Rating | 6.5524 | 7.0133 | 7.2300 | 6.9523 |
| Rank (Conf.) | 74/130 (7/12) | 53/130 (4/12) | 51/130 (5/12) | 58/130 (4/12) |
Multiple songs as its fight song? Seemingly the work of a madman, this actually works and flows better than originally thought given they’re completely different songs.
57. Northern Illinois
| Flow | Crowd Factor | Nostalgia/Feel Good | Overall | |
| Rating | 7.1131 | 6.7501 | 7.2005 | 6.9535 |
| Rank (Conf.) | 54/130 (3/12) | 70/130 (6/12) | 53/130 (5/12) | 57/130 (4/12) |
Good, but not great. No major issue here, but it wasn’t memorable enough to score higher for a smaller football school like Northern Illinois.
As mentioned, it was missing something memorable, but a very nice, well-rounded flow largely compensated for that.
56. Baylor
| Flow | Crowd Factor | Nostalgia/Feel Good | Overall | |
| Rating | 7.0043 | 6.8846 | 7.0881 | 6.9654 |
| Rank (Conf.) | 57/130 (6/10) | 63/130 (5/10) | 58/130 (5/10) | 56/130 (5/10) |
Catchy, but not overly memorable. You’re probably not going to be humming along to it days later, but definitely recognizable and nostalgia-evoking.
55. Kentucky
| Flow | Crowd Factor | Nostalgia/Feel Good | Overall | |
| Rating | 7.3139 | 6.7550 | 7.1101 | 6.9835 |
| Rank (Conf.) | 44/130 (10/14) | 69/130 (14/14) | 56/130 (11/14) | 55/130 (13/14) |
This one is peppy, fun and keeps interest. It’s a shame it’s in the SEC, because it wouldn’t be the second-worst fight song in any other conference. This one doesn’t get boring or repetitive in a bad way.
If Kentucky could get a consistently better football program, television broadcasts would definitely be made better by hearing the marching band play this more often.
54. Auburn
| Flow | Crowd Factor | Nostalgia/Feel Good | Overall | |
| Rating | 7.1513 | 7.0248 | 6.7853 | 6.9966 |
| Rank (Conf.) | 49/130 (11/14) | 52/130 (11/14) | 69/130 (13/14) | 54/130 (12/14) |
A strong showing for the Auburn Tigers. It is however, missing the panache or flair that takes it to the next level, because it’s just fine.
A couple times, it sounds like it’s going to attempt to shift into another gear, but then it comes back down.
53. Ohio
| Flow | Crowd Factor | Nostalgia/Feel Good | Overall | |
| Rating | 6.5514 | 7.0950 | 7.3100 | 7.0129 |
| Rank (Conf.) | 75/130 (4/12) | 49/130 (3/12) | 48/130 (4/12) | 53/130 (3/12) |
This song doesn’t pick up for 30 seconds. But once it does, we’re really rolling. It sounds like it’s a variation of some other school’s songs, but there are some detectable minor differences that enhance the song.
It does suffer from the slow start, but the creator of the song really nailed it otherwise.
52. Troy
| Flow | Crowd Factor | Nostalgia/Feel Good | Overall | |
| Rating | 6.7570 | 7.2122 | 7.0095 | 7.0477 |
| Rank (Conf.) | 69/130 (3/10) | 44/130 (1/10) | 60/130 (3/10) | 52/130 (2/10) |
The chanting that intersects the two halves is not a great intersection. The two halves are great and would’ve culminated in a top-25 song, most likely.
Chanting during this strong of a song helps crowd factor, but not by more than it drastically hurts flow, in this instance.
51. Connecticut
| Flow | Crowd Factor | Nostalgia/Feel Good | Overall | |
| Rating | 7.7560 | 6.8331 | 6.9091 | 7.0828 |
| Rank (Conf.) | 31/130 (2/7) | 65/130 (2/7) | 63/130 (3/7) | 51/130 (2/7) |
Thanks to NCAA Basketball 2K5, this song actually comes with more nostalgia from college basketball than from college football. At least for the third category, this is a knock against it.
Factor in that it likely plays with the basketball crowd more than it does the football crowd. That has to be a knock for the second category, as well.
Similar to Kansas, Connecticut’s fight song would be the cream of the crop for basketball. But this doesn’t seem like a great song to get the likely tepid crowd at Rentschler Field pumped up.
STILL TO COME: THE TOP 50!
Only 143 more days until FBS college football returns, football fans. Hang tough and see everyone each Wednesday morning for the next installation of ranking FBS fight songs.
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