Inventive Schools Give Tired Cheers the Old College Try : Spirit: Though USC and UCLA remain traditional, yell squads across the country delight crowds with witty and irreverent chants.

While USC quarterback Todd Marinovich may throw unexpected bombs to receivers in Saturday’s game against UCLA, the cheerleaders from both schools won’t vary from close-to-the-vest routines which advisers at both schools call “traditional.” UCLA cheerleaders will urge thousands of rooters to spell out B-R-U-I-N-S. USC yell leaders will implore one side of the Coliseum to chant “Go” and the other to bellow “Trojans.”

It’s not that way everywhere. Yell leaders at many colleges are more irreverent than the staid Bruins and Trojans, delighting crowds with witty and inventive cheers.

While fans at Occidental College in Eagle Rock scream “O-X-Y,” male yell leaders roll in the dirt in front of the grandstand to spell the letters.

If that doesn’t rouse anyone, yell squad captain Amy Muller says she can always rely on a poem which is a crowd favorite.

Oo oo ooga ahh

Ah ah ooga ahh

Igge igge igge oh

Ah ah ooga ahh

Go Oxy! rah, rah, rah.

The yell which brings tears to the eyes of alumni, however, is “Io Triumphe,” pirated from Albion College in Michigan in 1903.

Io Triumphe! Io Triumphe!

Haben, swaben, rebecca le animore

Whoopy, whoopty, shellerdy veridy;

Broomdy, Ralldy, eyedy pa

Honeka, heneka, wack-a wacka;

Hob, bob, boldibara, boldibara,

Con slomaday, hob, dab, rah!

O.C. RAH!

There is also some funny business going on at nearby California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

When the Beavers’ club team hosts the Pasadena Police Assn. Saturday, the police may need a decoding unit to understand the Caltech rooters fearsome traditional chant:

Cosine, tangent, secant, sine

Logarithm, logarithm, hyperbolic sign,

3-point-1-4-1-5-9

slide rule, slide rule

Tech, Tech, Tech.

The Yale University marching band also trumpets its intellectual achievements. When the Bulldogs play an opponent of questionable academic caliber, the musicians yell “Two, four, six, eight. We can count to eight.”

The band also plays fight songs by incomparable composers. Cole Porter, class of 1913, wrote “Bulldog,” containing the immortal line, “Bulldog! Bulldog! Bow, wow-wow,” and “Boola Boola,” which includes the verse:

Boola, Boola, Boola, Boola,

When the Bulldog gets poor Harvard

She will holler Boola Boo.

Charles Ives (1898) weighed in with a drinking song, “Here’s to Good Old Yale/Drink it down, drink it down,” not to be confused with his later complex, modernistic pieces.

Many other unusual yells dot the country. When the Fighting Gobblers of Virginia Tech score, a mechanical turkey gobbler on the scoreboard warbles.

Rooters for the University of California Irvine Anteaters add “Zot” after spelling out “U-C-I,” a throwback to the same word the anteater in the BC cartoon uses when its tongue reaches its prey.

At Massachusetts Institute of Technology, secure rooters display a cavalier attitude toward opponents’ successes, yelling:

That’s all right.

That’s OK.

You’re gonna work

For us someday.”

Unfortunately the Southern Arkansas Muleriders, the Arkansas Tech Wonder Boys and the University of Akron Zips report no unusual cheers, and some schools, such as Stanford University, have no organized cheers at all.

“We haven’t had them since the 1960s,” said Stanford spokesman Joel Shurkin, explaining that counterculture students voted out cheering.

“I’ve been here 10 years and I’ve seen one cheer and that was an ad hoc job during the big game with Cal . . . They’ve tried. God knows they’ve tried. But with limited success. There is no sign of them ever coming back.”