Songs of the Season
by David Parker
About half the people in America love the fact that in the month of December, you can’t go anywhere in this country without being flooded with Christmas songs. I personally can’t even call it Christmas until I’ve heard a certain list of my favorite standards. The other half hates this fact with a white hot passion. I thought it would be fun to mix the two seasons – football and Christmas – and connect some of the football teams we love and hate to the Christmas song they embody. Hope these ring true. I’ll portray each football programs’ frequency (and recentness) of championships, with each song’s frequency of being played on the radio and the shopping mall’s store speakers (at least while we still have stores). I hope yule enjoy them.
See what I…with the…?
Alabama: Let’s start right at the historical (and current) top. The Crimson Tide are “White Christmas” by Bing Crosby. That’s the song that everyone has said is the best Christmas song ever, whether it’s remotely true or not. It is the most played of any song of the season, and like Alabama, everyone is sick of hearing it.
FSU: Frosty the Snowman by The Ronettes, one of Phil Spector’s super groups from the ‘60s, coincidentally also the last decade FSU didn’t have a major program-wide scandal. Just like Frosty, whenever FSU gets under the hot stadium lights, they melt. And that iconic snowman prancing around and stabbing his broomstick trough the snow bears a striking resemblance to Chief Osceola and poking opposing school logos with his little play spear before a football game. Like Frosty with the traffic cop, FSU always flouts the law and the local cops let them get away without punishment. The Ronettes of course were an all-girl band, perfect for FSU, which was once an all-girls school. And like Phil Spector, they should all be in jail.
Miami: “Santa Claus and His Old Lady” by Cheech & Chong. Nor for the bilingual reason that might immediately comes to mind. This is a song wherein one lifetime criminal recidivist tells another the story of Santa Clause in a way that never happened, much as Miami fans like to tell the story of how their old dynasty days happened and leave out all the stuff about cheating, fighting, bringing assault weapons to the locker room, etc. Truth is, this song used to be a seasonal standard, but the comedy just doesn’t hold up. The stuff they pulled way back then simply doesn’t fly anymore. But fans of the song still think it’s the greatest tune in the Christmas songbook and insist it’s going to return to big time airplay any time now.
Auburn: “Christmas in Dixie,” by their home-state Alabama. Just the band; not the whole state…because over half the state hates them with the white hot passion of a thousand suns. It’s always been a good song that people like to hear, but never seem to hear on the radio very much. The DJ tells you it’s on the playlist, but commercial break after commercial break, it never seems to make it on air. And you always hear of that time they should have been played, but the DJ played a different song. The song is still a big name in SEC country, but outside of the south, nobody really cares.
Penn State: “If You Sit On My Lap Today” by Mickey Rooney. You’ll remember it as the song he sang to a throng of children in the Rankin-Bass Animagic classic “Santa Clause is Coming to Town.” Why Penn State? Here is a sampling of the lyrics:
If you sit on my lap today
A kiss a toy is the price you’ll pay
When you tell what you wish for —
In a whisper
Be prepared to pay.
If you sit on my lap today
A kiss a toy is the price you’ll pay
When you sit on my left knee
Don’t be stingy
Be prepared to pay!
Just going to leave that right there.
Wisconsin: Bob & Doug McKensie’s “Twelve Days of Christmas”. Don’t over-think this one. Always a fun listen, but it’s kind of slow and always comes apart in the middle just when the song is getting going good. They’re always drunk and just happy to be here. And you never hear it unless you dust off an old tape of yours. Take off.
Georgia: “Santa Baby”. Of course this is their primary holiday tune that dovetails with December signing period. Stuffing prospects’ stockings with checks, a duplex, deeds to platinum mines, you name it. And of course, the recruits hear the tantalizing tune of pecuniary promises and they think it is the cooing voice of a young Madonna or Eartha Kitt, or even Marilyn Monroe, but then they get to Athens and see that it’s really….Kirby.
Ole Miss: “Baby It’s Cold Outside”. Any artist. All are currently on probation. None are bowl eligible this year.
Ohio State: Bing Crosby’s “Oh Holy Night.” Another Bing Crosby tune, just like Alabama. Because the OSU Blackeyes think their blood is just as blue. But even though “Oh Holy Night” does get a radio drop every now and then, it’s not in the same league with “White Christmas.” And Ohio State thinks of themselves as true holier-than-thou, night or day, and their recently departed head coach is talking about writing a book on morality, which I assume will be on Barnes & Nobles’ shelves in the “Irony” section. And much like Bing Crosby himself, no matter the public OSU façade of wholesome goodness, on any given day someone in the family might get punched in the face.
West Virginia: “Merry Christmas from the Family” by the incomparable Robert Earl Keene. Perfect fit, because fact is everyone loves this song and it embodies all the celebrated idiosyncrasies and face-palms of hillbilly life. The Grier family follies could fill a whole verse. And of course the odds of ever hearing this on the radio are right around 0.0.
Central Florida: “Deck the Halls.” No artist, because it’s just a carol song. And everyone is SOOO sick of hearing it. It’s NEVER going to be played on the radio. It’s just a carol that some of the neighbors won’t stop singing. You know, those neighbors who didn’t go to a real college? If this song wants to be played on the radio, tell it to go get someone decent to sing it for once.
Tennessee: “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” by Elmo & Patsy. True, most Vols fans’ Christmas dinners are a deer that got run over by Grandma, but it’s still a perfect fit for Ricky Top. Watch the music video one time and see how many teeth you count. If you have to go to a second hand to count on, you’ve got a hi-def big screen. I know you’re thinking, “Wait, this doesn’t fit the premise of the game: this song gets as much air play as any seasonal standard, but the Vols haven’t won a national title since Google was founded.” But you have to remember this is a spoof song, and Tennessee wins a national title every year. Elmo & Patsy are the voices of the Life Championship.
USC: The Eagles classic, “Please Come Home for Christmas”. Like the song and the group, everyone seems to like USC (except The Dude, of course, who doesn’t abide the Eagles). They used to be the best at everything, and that song was once the most played and the most happily anticipated track of the season. But these days, people mostly just wonder what ever happened to that song. And the lyrics are a perfect reflection of USC’s current place in the college football universe: “My baby’s gone, I have no friends…to wish me greetings once again.”
University of Hawaii: “Christmas Island” by Jimmy Buffett. Everyone loves this song. It’s fun, it’s festive, it’s tropical, you can sing along to it. But, well, it’s never going to be played on the radio. And who cares? We’d all much rather travel and listen to it live.
Michigan: U2’s “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”. One of the best older songs of the season, it’s historically got among the most air play of any Christmas ditty. And it’s still talked about as one of the best ever. But when’s the last time you heard it on the radio? Late ‘90s, I believe (and I think another song was playing at the exact same time, sharing the air waves). U2 is also the perfect band for Jim Harbaugh. Remember that time during the Zooropa tour when right in the middle of a live interview, Bono stuck out his pinky and picked his nose on national TV? And like when Harbaugh did the same thing, neither one was a subtle pick or scratching the surface. They were trophy digging. Two of a kind. They stiiiill haven’t foooound what they’re lookin’ foooor.
LSU: What else? “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis” by Tom Waits. Like Coach O, Tom Waits is a strange, suspicious-looking man who is very well-respected in the music industry despite the fact that he’s never actually had a hit. The song is bellowing, gravelly, grumbly, and nobody has any idea what he is singing. He’s intensely passionate about what he is singing, and teams of distinguished linguists are hard at work trying to figure out what it is he’s passionately singing about. One look at Coach O and you know the piano has been drinking.
UF: “Santa Clause is Coming to Town” by Bruce Springsteen. It’s that Christmas classic that has roots in old school but never gets old. Never gets played as much as we’d like, but is in the regular holiday rotation every season, with the exception of some years when terrible DJs are hired – sometimes they only play songs from the black & white days, and sometimes they’re just too lazy to get out of their chair and change the music selection. But for now and ever, Bruce is The Boss. He may be missing from the dial from time to time, but he always gets back onto the playlist whenever there is a decent DJ in the booth. Because the song is. Just. That. Good.
