Columbia band benched for mocking losing team
(CBS/AP) NEW YORK - Headed to yet another winless season, Columbia's football team is going quietly.
The university administration has banned Columbia's marching band from playing during Saturday's season finale against Brown at Baker Field because the musicians used alternate words to the school fight song during last weekend's 62-41 defeat at Cornell.
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Columbia University band manager Jose Delgado told the Columbia Spectator that some members of the band sang different lyrics to the traditional fight song during last weekend's matchup. The spoof verses are sang on the band bus and Orgo Night, a Columbia University tradition where the band plays in Butler Library on midnight of the first day of finals, but are not meant for athletic games.
The paper said that the first two lines of the alternate verse say, "We always lose, lose, lose; by a lot, and sometimes by a little." The school added in a statement that the band also used lyrics to the effect of "Why do we even try, we always lose."
Athletic director M. Dianne Murphy says the university community was "extremely hurt, disappointed and angry."
Delgado said to the Columbia Spectator that the band plans to attend the game out of uniform and without their instruments.
Not including one-game seasons in the 1870s, this could be the seventh year Columbia loses all its games and the 11th time Columbia goes 0-7 in the Ivy League.
