We are the Champions

Jemma Wolfe,

Senior ANDY Editor

Friday Nov. 25 is a day McMaster will never forget. For the first time in our university’s history, our football team brought home the Vanier Cup after quite possibly the most exciting game the league has ever seen. It was so thrilling, so emotional and so euphoric that even I – an arts editor who has never played a sport in her life – was screaming and jumping around after Tyler Crapigna’s winning kick.

But perhaps sports and arts aren’t so unrelated. Perhaps it isn’t so bizarre for the arts to be interested in sports, and vice versa. No one can deny the fundamental relationship between music and games, for instance. From ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’ and its intrinsic association to baseball to the iconic theme song for Hockey Night in Canada, music is an integral part of the sporting experience.

I can’t quite imagine a hockey game without ‘Kernkraft 400’ by Zombie Nation playing at some point, or AC/DC’s ‘Thunderstruck’ coming on during time-outs. Even the Superbowl’s half-time show has become a fabled platform for superstar bands to perform on, and is annually awaited with much anticipation.

I wonder what songs were running through the heads of Mac’s football team as they practiced at B.C. Place. What tunes did they blast in the locker room as they donned their equipment with nervous fingers? What lyrics raced through their head as they began overtime, on the precarious precipice of victory? Finally, what ecstatic song became the celebratory anthem of their after party?

Sports and song – a happy couple with a long history and a prosperous future. Congrats to our Mac men on their Vanier Cup win; you made one arts editor proud.