You Know the words: A content analysis of college fight songs

This content analysis study examines the lyrics contained in the fight songs of the 130 NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision schools. Because fight songs are still being written and other fight songs are being updated to account for societal changes, a study of the themes that are common among fight songs would be valuable to those responsible for writing these important works. Literature related to college fight song studies, music, and branding, as well as music in advertising provides context to the study. The researchers engaged in a two-step process that involved theme identification and coded theme count. In the theme identification stage, the researchers used a common sample of two fight songs per conference to identify themes that consistently appeared in the song lyrics. The researchers then coded the full population of 130 songs seeking the identified themes across all songs. The most common themes were self-reference to the name of the university (97.7%), exclamation (93.1%), and togetherness (90%). The thematic analysis confirms the unification and excitement purposes that fight songs are intended to generate and confirm the role fight songs play in intercollegiate athletics branding—selling the concepts of unification and excitement to college sport consumers. The remaining themes included game-specific references, nickname, school colors, victory, vocalization, war, and word-splits.