It's going to ruffle feathers amongst the traditionalists, but it's a different era we are at right now.
Yes, it's a different era--
but so what? I would argue that one of the things that separates college football and makes it special from other American sports is its time-honored traditions. Show me something we've allowed to change (i.e. discontinuation of the Nebraska-Oklahoma and the Texas-Texas A&M rivalries) and I'll argue the overall sport lost a heck of a lot of passion, color, and excitement.
Now I'm not here to equate our Tunnel Walk music with the NU-OU rivalry, but the question remains:
WHY CHANGE? What is the value added and what is the value lost?
Are we to believe a change of music will get us MORE pumped up? Is that possible? If the Tunnel Walk has gotten ho-hum in recent years, I would argue that it has a heck of a lot more to do with the product on the field and a head coach unwilling (for some strange reason) to lead the team out of the locker room than it did about the music itself.
There is a reason why our pregame marching band music hasn't changed since I was a kid. Again, we've added to the tradition but there wasn't talk we needed a "better" fight song than, Hail Varsity.(My recollection is that we added the 'March of the Cornhusker' to the list in the mid-70s and 'March Grandioso' in the early 80s.) Nebraska Football is a family affair and the pregame rituals are one tangible way that we emotionally connect generation to generation.
In college football, the talk should never be about replacing traditions, It should be all about adding to our existing traditions. Old traditions remain but each generation usually adds its own (i.e. students waving one shoe in the air before kick-off---don't ask me how that started or what that's all about, but it's a tradition now.)
In our increasingly throw-away society, there's something reassuring about knowing what we'll see and hear when we enter Memorial Stadium for a Husker football game.
