Fight Song

HOW MANY generations of college football fans in this state got cheated out of the possibility of a game like this? For that matter, how much bigger could college football be in this state had they not been cheated out of the possibility of a game like this? And last but not least - can anybody justify cheating future fans out of the possibility of a game like this? The quick answers for these questions, in the aftermath of a contest at M&T Bank Stadium that won't be forgotten anytime soon, are as follows: four decades' worth; way bigger than it is now; and nobody.

When the high school varsity football season opens Sept. 9, you can bet the marching bands, color guard units and cheerleaders will be ready. That's because, like the players, they've been practicing. At Atholton, where Lee Stevens begins his 20th year as director of bands, the marching band and 17-member color guard unit have been rehearsing together since Aug. 15. Last week they were practicing seven hours (9 a.m. to 4 p.m.) a day on the school parking lot. "We're practicing six hours a day this week," Stevens said Wednesday.

Dr. Ralph Fletcher Davis Sr., a retired physician who as an undergraduate at the University of Maryland, College Park wrote its "Maryland Fight Song," died of heart failure Saturday at a hospital in Springfield, Ill. He was 83. Dr. Davis was born at Fort Sheridan, Ill., the son of a career military officer. In 1934, he moved with his family to Baltimore when his father was assigned to Fort Holabird. He was a 1937 graduate of City College and earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry at the university in 1941.

In July 1970, as mass protests against the Vietnam War spread across the country in the wake of the invasion of Cambodia and the killings of demonstrators that spring at Kent State University, recording artist Edwin Starr hit No. 1 on the pop charts with a song called "War." (Its memorable refrain: "War - huhhh - what is it good for - absolutely nothing !") Thirty-one years later, the song has been, um, re-interpreted to suit these sports-obsessed times of ours. The "artist" formerly known as linebacker Ray Lewis is out with a hip-hop version on CD just in time for the opening of the Ravens training camp.

Throughout her life, Lucy Haw loved the Colts. And tomorrow, when she's laid to rest, the Colts Marching Band fight song will be playing."I think she'd really like that," said her son John Haw, of Cary, N.C. The family hopes to have the song, the rallying cry for Colts fans for decades, played at the graveside service by members of the Baltimore Ravens Marching Band.Mrs. Haw, whose prized possession was a signed copy of Johnny Unitas' autobiography "Pro Quarterback," died of a brain tumor Friday at Ridgeway Manor Nursing Home in Catonsville.

So, you want me to sing it over the phone?Yes, John Modell, oldest son of Baltimore Ravens owner Art Modell, we do want you to sing the Ravens' Fight Song. After all, you wrote the ditty this spring. After all those years of warbling the Colts' Fight Song ("Let's go, you Baltimore Colts, and put that ball across the line ..."), it's time for a new fight song.Sing, John, sing.Flying High, Fierce pride in our eye, The Ravens of Baltimore ...Hey, good voice (maybe you had to be there).The Ravens were without their own fight song for the first two years, but the new stadium was cause for a Ravens song.

MILPITAS, Calif. -- The Notre Dame Fight Song is a familiar tune to sports fans everywhere. After yesterday, the Milpitas High School Little Big Band members can play it in their sleep.The 79-member band played the Notre Dame song -- also the Milpitas fight song -- 421 times for nearly four hours, more times than the record listed in the Guinness Book of Records for playing a single song, according to Wes Robbins, the band leader.They were trying to set a record -- although the activity was not monitored by Guinness and has not been certified.

Seattle -- Seasonal sounds -- brittle leaves crackling underfoot, migrating birds calling overhead -- will soon surround us. None is more stirring than the strange music that issues from American campuses as football crowds serenade themselves with songs expressing eternal devotion to alma mater and a desire to eviscerate this Saturday's opponent.However, here at the University of Washington, the music of autumnal mayhem is peculiar in one particular. Its song should be sung at the other edge of the continent, as the anthem of the federal bureaucracy.

Gerrie Highto ends the evening by unintentionally moving the world."In honor of our boys coming home from the Persian Gulf," she says simply, "we want to sing 'God Bless America.' "She is standing in this big room on Belvedere Avenue in Northwest Baltimore, at the Concord House residential center for the elderly, looking out at maybe 200 people who have come to hear her Covenant Guild choral group perform.The audience is beautiful. They're sitting there, many of them, in wheelchairs. Lots more have walkers and canes, and they're bundled in sweaters and housedresses.