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Cult! Fear and loathing in College Station

HAH! I KNEW IT!!!!!!!

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Cult! Fear and loathing in College Station

By Chris Bellamy

I tried to escape. Honest, I did. But believe me when I tell you, I didn't know what the hell was going on. What was happening around me was dumbfounding, disturbing, frightening.

I don't know what it was that compelled me to stay. Maybe it was fear. Maybe it was my obscene sense of curiosity. Maybe it was the smell.

Whatever the reason, last Friday night I found myself, along with my co-workers Asad Kudiya and Kevin Buehler, in probably the most peculiar situation of my life.

Cannons were firing. People were chanting. They were gyrating in unison. My God, they were doing synchronized pushups!

This was called "The Yell," and I found myself unwittingly and unintentionally thrown into the middle of it. It was there that I began to discover just what College Station, Texas was all about-and I'm not exaggerating when I say it may have changed my life forever.

More than 30,000 Aggie fans crowded the streets outside the stadium just before midnight last Friday, as they do before every home game, ready to take part in this massive pre-game pep rally.

Now, I had always heard about cults. I had even seen a few documentaries on them on The Learning Channel. Heaven's Gate. Jim Jones and The People's Temple.

But never had I seen a cult up close and personal until we settled into our places in Kyle Field Friday night.

It started with the pushups. Then it was the "Fighting Aggie War Hymn," a tune repeated ad nauseam all night long, one that still rings in my head at this very hour.

Hullabaloo, Caneck, Caneck. Hullabaloo, Caneck, Caneck. All hail to dear old Texas A&M...

Then it got weird. A group of young men, wearing matching overalls, took center stage down on the sidelines as the raucous crowd suddenly hushed. The men began leading these Aggie faithful in chants, cheers and the reading of Masonic verses.

And everyone knew exactly what to do-and when to do it. They knew what every hand gesture meant. They knew every word of every chant and every song.

Everyone except us, of course. We, visitors from Utah, did not belong. We did not have the ceremony down by heart. But we did what we were told. What else could we do?

"I was confused...and scared," a genuinely shaken Asad told me afterward. "I felt like if I didn't do what they were doing, they were going to rape me."

We leaned over and bowed our heads with the rest of them. We repeated those infernal chants and sang the praises of the Aggie gods. We leaped up and threw our hands in the air, and praised the Good Laaaaawwwwd, as the four men down in front declared a Jihad on the Utah Ute football team.

Beat the hell out of Utah, they chanted. Beat the hell out of Utah!!

The four Yell leaders wailed on the microphone and told the crowd to Riiiiiise Up! They made a strange, Hitler-looking gesture to the crowd, and all of a sudden the people around us threw their arms around us and we all began to sway from side to side, singing that war hymn...and it was then that I realized that everyone was speaking in tongues.

Hullabaloo, Caneck, Caneck. Hullabaloo, Caneck, Caneck. We're gonna beat you all to Chigaroogarem. Chigaroogarem. Rough, tough, real stuff, Texas A&M!

My memory is a little fuzzy, but if I remember correctly, everyone around us was wearing long, white cloaks and burning candles. And If I'm not mistaken, there was a virgin sacrifice as well.

Strange and terrible things began happening inside me. These people had been brainwashed, I was sure of it...but...I kind of liked it. I was oddly titillated by the whole experience, ashamed as I am to admit that.

I was conflicted. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I loved them and loathed them. I was repulsed, yet mysteriously drawn to their sick, twisted game, comforted by this theatre of mass worship, this cornucopia of rabid fan psychosis. It was like a KKK gathering on mushrooms.

Talk about worshipping false idols. This was just for the football team, for Pete's sake. The football team!

The U football team sometimes struggles to get 35,000 fans at the actual game-A&M got that many for the pep rally. On a late Friday night, no less. These kids should have been getting wasted, having sex and walking around town in a drunken stupor stealing stop signs and falling asleep in public fountains.

But no-at half past midnight, they were at the football stadium, worshipping Dennis Franchione while four boys in overalls did their best impression of an Episcopal sermon.

I'd never seen anything like this place. None of us had.

I mean, what can you say about a town that simultaneously symbolizes everything that is right about college football, and everything that's wrong about our nation's educational system?

But it wasn't just the football fans-the whole town of College Station was ass-backward.

The place was littered with the scary but aptly named Crickets on Steroids with Wings, which may or may not have been the apocalyptic, flesh-eating bugs prophesied in the Bible.

The night desk clerk at our hotel was named Lucifer. Everyone in town drove a maroon-colored pickup truck. The uniform code at every business establishment was an Aggies T-shirt. The school marching band looked uncannily like the Third Reich. We went to a bar where people actually played darts for hours and hours on end. Who does that?!

Small things, I know. But after our experience Friday night, every little thing made the town seem all the more strange.

When we left "The Yell" Friday night, none of us could speak. What the hell just happened, we all thought to ourselves. That wasn't just school spirit-it was something different altogether. Those people were just...different. If this wasn't a cult, I didn't know what was.

The experience of College Station was an odd one. To tell you the truth, I'm just glad I got out of there alive. Hopefully, the place didn't rub off on me.

Hullabaloo, caneck, caneck. Chigaroogarem. Chigaroogarem.

i did find it pretty wierd when they came here for our football game... the way they all kept bending over... and the fact they have no real cheerleaders... just guys called yell leaders...

Re: Cult! Fear and loathing in College Station

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Originally posted by JStrider
i did find it pretty wierd when they came here for our football game... the way they all kept bending over... and the fact they have no real cheerleaders... just guys called yell leaders...

hehe, those yell leaders! crazy bastards they are.

and yes, aggies like to "hump" (they use the same word) a lot even if a guy is in front of u. there is a lot of humping going on during aggie football games.

every class has their own little "yell" which includes crazy words and crazy body jestures, and occassional "whoops".

and oh yeah, you will get beat up if you walk on the grass in a&m. i'm guessing that grass is one of the gods that they worship.

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My memory is a little fuzzy, but if I remember correctly, everyone around us was wearing long, white cloaks and burning candles. And If I'm not mistaken, there was a virgin sacrifice as well.

I wouldnt be surprised one bit!

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those ttu fans are crazy too. dont y'all throw your goalposts at every opponent u beat ? :D

Hook 'em Horns!

no no we dont throw the goalposts... we just did that once last year... after we beat UT... that was a good game... i wish i had gone...

were not crazy just very spirited

we'll see how badly we crush UT at home this year :D

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Originally posted by JStrider
no no we dont throw the goalposts... we just did that once last year... after we beat UT... that was a good game... i wish i had gone...

were not crazy just very spirited

we'll see how badly we crush UT at home this year :D

hehe, keep wishing.

http://redraiders.com/gallery/tamu_p...ostgame041.jpg

http://redraiders.com/gallery/tamu_p...ostgame043.jpg

http://redraiders.com/gallery/tamu_p...ostgame049.jpg

http://www.redraiders.com/images/100...goalpostLR.jpg

that's yall throwin the posts at the aggies :D

o_O

Davis is known as Aggies, but I knew they couldn't have been so bat fucking insane.... only the texans.

lol yah that was once... last year... only time its happend while ive been here...

now they drop the posts and have a ton of security there to make sure they can arrest a handful of us if we actually do storm the field....

if u notice, one of the pics is during the day and one is during the night.

looks like y'all are pretty good at this :D.

Re: Re: Cult! Fear and loathing in College Station

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Originally posted by The_Dude

and oh yeah, you will get beat up if you walk on the grass in a&m. i'm guessing that grass is one of the gods that they worship.

That only applies to the grass around the Memorial Student Center. It's a tribute to the Aggies who have gone off and died in wars. So asking students to keep off the grass and remove their hats when entering the building is out of respect and I can appreciate that.

But yeah, pretty much everything else done around A&M is strange and goofy. :crazy:

You have entered....The Twilight Zone. A&M is just a strange place.

Is it true they named it A&M so the alumni could spell it?

People that have gone to A&M tell me that you have to go there to understand it. I'm not going there, so I guess I never will. :D

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Originally posted by tj2001cobra
People that have gone to A&M tell me that you have to go there to understand it. I'm not going there, so I guess I never will. :D

I work with a guy who went there.
I don't understand <i>him</i>.

I have to add to stories of Aggie weirdness. They buried their dead collie mascots outside the endzone of Kyle Field, facing the scoreboard. When they decided to renovate/expand the seating, they had to remove the remains and rebury them outside the stadium. Okay, fine, I can understand treating dead mascots with respect.
But trouble arose when they realized that the dead collies could no longer see the scoreboard. So, until they could build a new scoreboard outside the stadium so that the dead mascots could see it, they had a corp member stand outside, facing the graves of these dead dogs with a chalkboard scoreboard during games. I'm not making any of this up.

My other amusing Aggie story regards their chant, "Beat - the - Hell - out - of ____, Hey/A/Whoop, whatever"

A&M was in Waco, playing Baylor, a Baptist school, and winning pretty bad, suprise, suprise. The yell leaders led the A&M fans in several renditions of "Beat-the-Hell-out-of Baylor" It was late in the game, and few fans were paying attention. The Baylor scoreboard operator, in a rare fit of humor, put up on the jumbotron, "There is no Hell in Baylor."
Don't know if he got in trouble for it, but it gave me a chuckle.

As strange at that may sound it doesn't quite sound as bad as the colleges in LaCrosse, WI. There are 3 of them there. There's also a brewery in town that sponsers an Octoberfest every year. It's Basically a get drunk festival with all the beer you can buy. Mix that with 3 colleges all occuring down town. They used to have trouble with riots every year. I remember when I was living there hearing of shootings and burning overturned cars. All very strange and creepy actually. We didn't go anywhere up to the suburbs to get groceries during Octoberfest. The cops finally figured out that instead of showing a large law enforcement presence they could control things better by having LOTS of undercovers wandering around to take down guys as they got roudy. Even got on Police videos shows.

talking about the dog, i have another story.

one recently died and u should've seen the grievences on texags.com

there were people who were crying and telling how much they will miss a dog that they have never seen.

the dog is supposed to be the highest officer in the corps of cadets too :D it was some hilarious stuff.

I've known it all along. Those bastards.