There are two stories claiming the origin of this famous phrase, the first of which comes from back in 1946 when many college football teams were still segregated. Penn State had two black players named Wally Triplett and Denny Hoggard, and before a game against the University of Miami which was still segregated at the time and refused to play if PSU's black players played, Penn State's team voted unamimously to cancel the game. This was only the beginning.
In 1948, Triplett was the only black player on the team who was now facing a trip to the Cotton Bowl against Southern Methodist University. Upon hearing that SMU was requesting Triplett to be left at home, Steve Suhey coined our famous phrase with the quote "We won't leave Triplett at home because we are Penn State." Triplett ended up scoring the tying touchdown with the game ending in a 13-13 tie.
Although this story builds a history of brotherhood and morality at Penn State, this is unfortunately not the true origin of the chant, although it certainly did happen. The real story begins in 1975.
The Penn State cheerleaders accompanied the football team to Ohio State (boo!) and were stunned by the energy and electricity of the fans in the crowd, and particularly with the simplicity and effectiveness of OSU's 'O-H' 'I-O' chant. They wanted to find a way to bring that level of energy to Beaver Stadium, which is ironic now considering that we were voted among the top college football atmospheres in the nation.
The We Are chant was also partially inspired by USC's rapid chant of "We are SC", which the cheerleaders modified by replacing SC with Penn State, however, in 1976, upon trying to get the students to cheer "We Are Penn State" without any pauses between the words (think like in Zombie Nation), it went nowhere. The cheerleaders kept trying and added the pause to create the call and response effect we all know and love today. The Blue Band drummers were enlisted by the cheerleaders to help the crowd learn by adding two bass hits so the cheer sounded something like "We Are! boom boom Penn State!".
It took a few years for it to catch on at our home stadium. The cheerleaders used speakers without permission, and Don Mains, the mic man who led the cheers during the game split up and taught the cheers to the alumni and the student section, but it wasn't nearly as loud as it is today. Older alumni were also annoyed by the chant, saying that it distracted them from the game, so sometime around 1980 the "Thank you... You're Welcome" was added to the end by the cheerleaders to get the student section to thank the alumni in the stands for participating in the cheer.
So, in the end our chant didn't quite originate from the story of a courageous team who fought for civil right, although that story certainly is one to be proud of. The We Are chant has become such an important aspect of Penn State culture, and for that we must thank the cheerleaders from years ago.
I'd give our chant 10 yelling mic men out of 10
I find this post interesting because I didn't think that so much history was behind the chant. The Penn State "We Are" chant has served its purpose of uniting the university and making everyone at Penn State feel included in a bigger family!
ReplyDeleteI had heard the story of the football players. I think Penn State tries to tout that as the true origin of the chant because it paints us in a good light, but if people keep finding out that's not the true origin, it makes us look bad! This post was informative and also written in a really appropriate tone - I felt like I was having a conversation with you!! Really awesome post.
ReplyDeleteI'd heard the football origin a few times before, I think from one of the tour guides. It's nice that they were giving PSU a good rep, but it's a little disingenuous to lie about the real story. Regardless, this was a great post, and taught me something about my school that I'd never heard of before.
ReplyDeleteI just realized that Wally Tripplet went to my high school! Small world. Anyway, great post. I thought that the origin of we are was the football story, but I guess people tell that as the origin story because its more interesting than the actual story. Nice job Amy!
ReplyDeleteWow this was really interesting. The only story I knew about was the one from 1946, which I still want to believe is the real reason! Regardless I love how you were able to relay the story that our chant has a history behind it. Nice job!
ReplyDeleteThat's really cool how the We Are chant came about. It figues that we would make our chant just to be better than Ohio State, like usual. I also like how it evolved over time to become what it is today. Your post was really cool!
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