“Backs Go Tearing By”

Title: “Backs Go Tearing By”

General Information about Item:

  • Verbal Folklore: Ritual
  • English
  • United States of America

Informant Data:

  • Name: Buddy Teevens
    • Dartmouth YG: 1979
    • Residence: Hanover, New Hampshire
    • Years of experience coaching: 26 years
    • Current position: Head Coach of Dartmouth Football

 

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context:
    • The coaches encourage the team to be tough in everything that they do, particularly in practices and games.
  • Social Context:
    • This song allows the Dartmouth football team to bask in their victory.

Item:

  • Ritual: After a Dartmouth football victory at the home field, the players go into Leverone and sing this song together. This is an act of pride in their success and in the Dartmouth Spirit

Transcript of Associated File:

Coach Teevens: But in our little world that’s what we do. And after that after a win we go back into Leverone we get together and there’s the “Backs Go Tearing By” it’s the football medley is what it’s termed and you don’t hear it much anymore, it’s why you hear the band play it, I think a lot of people don’t know what it is. But with us we taught them that song just kind of culminates with the amount of points you beat the opponent by and then you count them off. You count them forty-something, fifty, you go “1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10.”

Collector’s Name: Kristen Maiorano

Tags/Keywords:

Verbal Folklore, ritual, football, backs go tearing by

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