You have to chalk it up to Kansas football fans for sheer cheer-inventiveness.
That’s because one person doing it looks like he’s trying to direct traffic after a fender-bender.
While simultaneously dealing with a swarm of angry hornets who just happened to be going the same way.
But when 40,000 people are engaging in the above at the same time, you’ve got a gridiron wonder of celebration to behold.
“Waving the Wheat,” we mean.
That’s what KU football fans in the seats, home or away, do every time a Jayhawk finds the end zone.
Four easy steps.
No. 1: Put your hands (and arms) in air, but not like you just don’t care — because, of course, you do, since your team just added six points to the board.
No. 2: Wave your arms to the right.
No. 3: Wave your arms to the left.
No. 4: Repeat the previous two steps for as long as necessary.
The end result is a visually compelling, undulating swirl, meant to look like those amber waves of grain that made Kansas famous in the first place.
Coach Neal Brown and the Mountaineers of WVU are understandably hoping that no waving of the wheat shall ensue when the Jayhawks of KU come to town for Saturday’s noon game at Milan Puskar Stadium.
Coal (and other crops)
Wheat to Kansas is what coal is to West Virginia.
Wheat puts Thanksgiving dinner on the table and Christmas presents under the tree.
In West Virginia, where you sometimes go subterranean for your purchase of the American Dream, coal does exactly the same.
Mountain State miners were waylaid by the Great Depression.
The Dust Bowl snuffed out the toil of one Kansas wheat farmer right after the other during that same period.
West Virginians and Kansans stay at it, though.
That’s what people who work for a living do.
And that includes their allegiance to the football teams of their land-grant universities.
Especially at the University of Kansas, which is still sometimes regarded as a basketball school that also plays football.
Basketball gave the campus in Lawrence a signature, soul-stirring cheer.
That would be “Rock, Chalk, Chant,” a Gregorian-sounding overture that echoes down the rows of the Allen Fieldhouse, where even the opposing fans have to say, “Whoa” when they hear it.
Doesn’t necessarily translate to football, though, said Chris Lazzarino, an associate editor with the KU Alumni Magazine.
“It’s made for an indoor arena,” Lazzarino said.
“You need the echoes and the resonance,” he continued.
“You have to commit to the chant. ‘Waving the Wheat’ is just fun.”
Cheering for geography
So are KU fans and WVU fans, said Lazzarino, who was born in Wyoming, grew up in Kansas, went to school in Lawrence and has made many a trip to Morgantown for games over the years since the move to the Big 12.
“Your fans are great, your scenery is something else and you’ve got the perfect environment for football,” he said.
In terms of temperament, he said, the football fans, and people in general, who live in the midst of those amber waves of grain aren’t all that different from the football fans, and people in general, who occupy the hills and hollows of Appalachia.
Don’t worry about conference realignment, he said, or name, image and likeness either.
Some things … just are.
Ground game
Edna Becker may have been too regional to get anthologized, but the late Topeka poet caught the ethos of both locales when she looked back in “Dust-Bowl Farmer,” her elegy of a time when that black cloud didn’t take everything.
“A two weeks’ stubble was on his chin,
His overalls were worn and old
His hands were hands of toil.
He had seen the scourging dust
Destroy his greening wheat, and now
His fields stretch to the sky,
A barren waste.
But in his veins the blood of sturdy pioneers ran cool,
And he, seasoned by the endless wind,
The blazing sun, the drought, the lonely plains,
Looked at the ground and said,
‘I aim to try again.’”
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