In a “man, July sucks for college sports” item, they are listing out the top ten PAC-10 fight songs over at Buster Sports.com. They even recruited the help of a retired sports writer from the Oregonian to break down the songs (yes, it is a slow time right now). But that said, guess who came in at #1?
May you continue to rest in peace John Candy…but God bless the character known as Tom Tuttle! By the way, some of you probably know this already, but, did you know that there was/is a real Tom Tuttle? It’s true. Remember Ken Levine, who worked for the M’s for a few years? That same Ken Levine is also an Emmy-winning writer/director/producer (so says his bio anyway). Levine actually co-wrote the screenplay to Volunteers, along with David Isaac, and is responsible for the character. And he specifically wanted the character to be from WSU, and they loved the fight song. Check it out, in an e-mail Levine sent to the “real” Tom Tuttle:
Believe it or not, my partner David and I wrote the very first draft of VOLUNTEERS in 1980. It took five years to get made and released. We honestly pulled the name out of the air. We wanted the character to be real gung ho and for contrast, hail from as far away from the east coast as possible. First we came up with WSU as the college. We wanted the school to be well known (they’re in the Pac 10) but still a little offbeat. We checked out a few fight songs, liked WSU’s the best and settled on that. Then we figured the character should hail from the state of Washington. Tacoma was sort of a funny sounding name and again, a city that was recognizable. We always pictured that the character was a little wired and whenever he introduced himself would say his name and where he’s from. So alliteration was employed to help the name roll off his tongue. Somehow we came up with Tom Tuttle from Tacoma. We just liked the rhythm of it. If we had gone with Spokane it might have been Stan Stodell from Spokane.
Cool.
Anyway, as the Buster Sports article says:
1. Washington State: “Fight Song”
Maves: Written a long time ago by two women, which doesn’t matter much. But they were both music majors, which does matter. Rhythmic, balanced, inspirational.
Notice who’s #10 on the list?
10. Washington: “Bow Down to Washington”
Maves: This thing is horrid, with neither rhythm nor timing nor anything to recommend it. It’s unsingable and barely playable. They have a really cool secondary song called “Victory for Washington” which is actually pretty good, but it ain’t the official song. Damn shame.
I’m sure it’s WSU’s fault that they are #10. Some how, some way, we’re responsible?
Moving on….
Meanwhile, they have announced who will be representing the different schools at PAC-10 media day, July 30th in LA. And none other than senior center Kenny Alfred will be on hand to answer the expected avalanche of “do you have any hope for this season?” type questions. I like Alfred, and without a doubt he’s the most experienced, decorated player on the WSU offense coming into ’09. A good choice for coach Wulff here. I think Alfred will say what’s on his mind?
Finally, something kind of cool here. A few months ago, a poster on a message board created an interactive Google map for PAC-10 recruiting this year. The map shows the geographical locations of all the current commits, for each PAC-10 school. Check it out:
The map is completely interactive too. You can click on a school logo, and instantly get a pop-up of the player name and photo. But the most interesting thing to me was to see the different areas of the country that Stanford has been reeling ’em in. They are ALL OVER the map, which is pretty remarkable. They currently have 23 commits, the most in the conference, and are sitting at number five IN THE COUNTRY in the early recruiting rankings. Again, pretty remarkable for a program just three seasons ago had one of the worst teams in the modern PAC-10 era.
I know Stanford is a different animal in terms of academics, literally an Ivy League school on the west coast. But I guess they are at least one example where if you get the right coach and the right system in place, it can turn around in a few short years? Anyway, you can get the whole interactive map here.
That’s it for a slow Wednesday. Enjoy it, and as always, FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FOR WASHINGTON STATE!
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