From 150 miles away, a home music studio in Greenville, S.C., will birth a Georgia State tradition.
In a few weeks, Jay Bocook, a music professor at Furman and a renowned composer whose notes have graced three Olympiads, will sit down at his computer and piano to compose Georgia State's fight song.
"It's daunting, because it has to be right," said Bocook, who has never written a fight song. "Something that becomes the tradition of an institution is different than writing a halftime show."
Lyrics will come later, said Chester Phillips, GSU's new director of athletic bands, perhaps written by a committee of students. Later on, focus groups of students, sports teams, alumni and others will critique it and perhaps send it back for revision, said athletics director Cheryl Levick.
Well, isn't that how "I'm a Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech" was written? No?
At Georgia State, where the football team and athletics director are new, where the logo and mascot have been re-designed, excitement is building for a new fight song and marching band.
"It's all part of the re-branding of Georgia State athletics," Levick said, "and when we roll it out, with a new song, as well as a band, as well as a [football] team, as well as advertising and marketing and fun fan events, we'll have it all."
At least one member of the football coaching staff eagerly awaits the arrival of the new fight song. Before he started down the path that took him to two Super Bowls and coaching jobs at Georgia Tech, Alabama and Kentucky, Bill Curry was a baritone horn player.
"As a matter of fact, my band director, I'll never forget him saying, ‘Good gosh, Bill, I need you a lot more than that football team does,' " Curry said with a chuckle. "‘You're a much better baritone player than you are playing linebacker.'"
A new fight song wasn't exactly on Levick's agenda when she became athletics director in February. However, in meeting with students, staff, faculty and boosters, she realized it needed to be.
Early in the decade, "Panther Pride" replaced "Red and Blue" as the school fight song, according to Robert Ambrose, the associate director of GSU's music school. Yet, despite being modified at least twice in the past decade, "Panther Pride" has failed to rouse the passion of fans and alumni. Among other things, Levick said people told her that it sounded like a polka and that it was "boring" and "outdated."
"The current one is, I don't know, it's not up to par," said Eric Vogel II, a sophomore in the pep band who will also be in the marching band. "I believe a new fight song is needed for this transition."
When the school hired Phillips to direct the new marching band, part of his charge was to conjure up a new fight song.
"We feel like in a lot of ways, there is a little bit of tradition, but from the larger scale, we're going to have to develop a culture of school spirit here, especially spirit that's tied into football and athletics," said Phillips, who was hired from Georgia, where he helped direct the Redcoat Marching Band.
Not much is being left to chance. Two weeks ago, Phillips went to Greenville to meet with Bocook. Phillips told him about the school's cultural diversity and, he said, "the energy that's going on here." They discussed what meter and key the song should be written in and that it should sound like a quick-step march. Another stipulation was that the tune had to have a section where fans can chant "G!S!U!"
It might be a little ironic that a university known for its music school would outsource the composition of its fight song, but Phillips said, "Because of the eminent need for it to be done, we went to the best." A donor is paying the composition fee, somewhere between $6,000 and $8,000, according to Levick.
Georgia's "Glory, Glory to Old Georgia" has been sung since the 1890's but was arranged in 1915 by graduate Hugh Hodgson, who later headed the UGA music department that now bears his name. Georgia Tech's fight song can be traced back to the first two years after the school opened in 1888, after the student body went to Athens to watch the Tech baseball team beat Georgia.
Phillips hopes that the song will debut during basketball season. By the time the football team begins play next fall, he'll have assembled a marching band that, he can already tell you, will march out of the Georgia Dome tunnel at 7:16 p.m. (give or take a minute) on September 2, 2010, for the Panthers' opener against Shorter College.
Wherever Curry is at that point, the old baritone player will likely be listening.
Said the coach, "I hope it'll be something that people remember and that it'll be ours."
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