For Mike - Rock Chalk Explained!

[gsarchie]

Let me start by saying that the audio in this video isn't the best as it doesn't capture the way that the chant fills the air in the Fieldhouse. Either way, you get a feel for what it is like. When you're in that Fieldhouse everyone in there is family, save for the very, VERY few that go there to root for the visiting team. Memorial Stadium is just as loud but because there are so many more people that fit in there it reverberates more deeply in your chest. Pure awesomeness.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h51be27dN8c

Taken from the KU website:
"KU's world famous Rock Chalk Chant evolved from a cheer that a chemistry professor, E.H.S. Bailey, created for the KU science club in 1886. Bailey's version was "Rah, Rah, Jayhawk, KU" repeated three times. The rahs were later replaced by "Rock Chalk," a transposition of chalk rock, the name for the limestone outcropping found on Mount Oread, site of the Lawrence campus.

The cheer became known worldwide. Teddy Roosevelt pronounced it the greatest college chant he'd ever heard. Legend has it that troops used the chant when fighting in the Philippines in 1899, in the Boxer Rebellion in China, and in World War II. At the Olympic games in 1920, the King of Belgium asked for a typical American college yell. The assembled athletes agreed on KU's Rock Chalk and rendered it for His Majesty."

I hope that explains it Mike! ROCK CHALK!

[Mike41793]

Ohhh i thought it was like something everyone chanted during games like to distract the other team or something. Or to motivate the jayhawks. Its just like the end of the theme song. Thats not really what i was picturing tbh. In my head it was much more aggressive/intmidating. That was more gregorian chant like lol.

Anyways, thanks for the explanation at least. If teddy roosevelt condones it then it must be good bc hes a badass from way back!

[gsarchie]

It is definitely not just the end of the Alma Mater, or "theme song" as you put it, and if anything else it has become part of the Alma Mater but not vice versa. The Alma mater is not sung without being followed by the Rock Chalk Chant, but the Rock Chalk Chant is said frequently without the Alma Mater. It is always chanted before a game and then when the game is near the end, if Kansas is clearly going to win, which is most of the time, it is chanted until the clock runs out. So picture the last two minutes of a game, with time outs, with that being chanted over and over. Like I said, the video doesn't do it justice, as it is exceptionally loud when being chanted in the Fieldhouse and/or Memorial Stadium. It rocks the place!

[Mike41793]

Ahhhh i see. That makes sense i guess.

[gsarchie]

Ahhhh i see. That makes sense i guess.

I guess it's just a Kansas thing. LOL ROCK CHALK!