Marching Bands, Heismans, and Bill Murray: While We’re Waiting…

Happy Thursday, Cleveland. The Cleveland Indians are nah-ing their way through free agency, the Cavaliers are meh-ing their way through this Kyrie Irving-less stretch of the regular season, and the Browns are wtf-ing their way into an infinite chasm of despair. But while we’re waiting… .

You probably didn’t click your way here expecting a link from College Marching, did you? But that’s exactly what you’re going to get, because I somehow wandered across this story about “Why doesn’t ESPN show the [college marching band] halftime shows?” I found it interesting and wanted to blab about it.

College football is special for a variety of reasons, which collaborate to create a uniquely magical and festive atmosphere unattainable at any other sporting event in the world. The drunk kids, the generation-spanning loyalty, the coeds, the campuses. College marching bands are a big part of that — the fight songs and tacky pageantry of marching bands are a sequined badge of honor for the college football atmosphere that no other sport boasts.¹

While marching bands are a minor part of the in-person viewing experience, they’re instrumental (pun intended) in creating the ambiance of college football. Yet they’re even a smaller part of the at-home viewing experience, and their biggest showcases for the fans — the halftime shows — are ignored by television networks. Why?

The indirect answer is exactly what you’d expect: money. The indirect answer only takes a moment of contemplation to guess: television networks like ESPN don’t have the rights to the music played by the bands.

So could ESPN pay for the rights to all the halftime shows? Sure they could, but they don’t have the infrastructure to accept the music from every band that is playing and then submit to compliance. After they go through all the processes they would not make as much money as they do at halftime currently. For big games like the Rose Bowl or the National Championships they will do it, but for regular games throughout the year? They’re not ready to make that investment.

There are interesting (and complicated) exceptions to the need to license music like fight songs (which are mostly owned by universities and probably licensed to networks as part of TV deals) and “ambient noise” played during games (an exception to what otherwise might be unlicensed use of copyrighted music).

But I became annoyed reading the excuses to not figure out a way to get some of these shows on the air — mad at networks and musical licensing organizations like ASCAP and BMI and even the bands. There should be a way to make this work for all parties without the financial investment and red tape.

What if ESPN put the artist name and song title on the TV while the band played the song? What’s better for The Who or Curtis Mayfield or Thomas Dolby? That they don’t get royalties from ESPN? Or that millions of people hear a marching band play “Eminence Front” or “Move on Up” or “She Blinded Me with Science” and be reminded or discover, “Hey, that’s a cool song!”? What if ESPN integrated the halftime shows with the Shazam app so that people could put their phone up to the TV and be sent to a link to download the song?

It reminded me of Rolling Stone‘s letter to the music industry on mp3 file-sharing. With a little creativity, I think everyone involved can make money here. But everyone’s too lazy to figure it out. Piracy is wrong, sure. But I’m infinitely more likely to buy a ticket to a band’s concert and a $50 t-shirt when I’ve heard their music — and I’ve discovered a lot of bands and songs via free access to that music.

I don’t think every college football halftime show needs to be a scene from Drumline, but wouldn’t your Saturday be five percent cooler if we occasionally saw one of the cooler marching bands doing something cool during halftime instead of listening to Mack Brown talk about what a “big game” the Tide have that afternoon? It’s probably a good thing for Michael Jackson’s estate to have “Billie Jean” heard by millions as part of a viral video when the Ohio State band freaking moonwalks across the field.

But we all know why a lot of this cool stuff won’t happen: jerk lawyers.²

The Heisman Trophy award ceremony is Saturday night, and there’s actually a little suspense about who will win it for the first time in years. The three invitees are Alabama running back Derrick Henry, Clemson quarterback Deshaun Watson, and Stanford running back/receiver/kick returner/backup quarterback Christian McCaffrey. They’re all deserving candidates, but I would have given my vote to McCaffrey, who broke Barry Sanders’ record from 1988 for the most all purpose yards in a single season with 3496 (!!!).³

McCaffrey has 2147 rushing yards, 791 receiving yards, over 1100 return yards, and even two passing touchdowns on the season. He plays in a legitimate conference, I feel like it should be a bigger deal that he broke the Sanders record, and he has been the most exciting player in college football all season. His lateral bursts and speed at the second level are eye-popping. Give him the trophy.

One of my favorite things that some great football players do is let the ex-track athlete in them take over when they get in the open field, pumping their arms and lengthening their strides as if moved by an internal combustion engine as they leave everyone in the dust.⁴ The clip below shows McCaffrey’s running form taking control in the open field against Cal. The best part of the clip is the Cal fan, mouth agape, leaning closer to her husband (presumably) in reaction to the 98-yard return to whisper, “Are you [bleeping] kidding me?”

Vanity Fair put Bill Murray on the cover of their most recent issue talking about him rediscovering his funny side, a story which the New York Times piggy-backed on.⁵ Steven Kurutz of the Times called Murray a “secular saint,” and both pieces marvel at his weirdly fervent cult status.

Murray’s long been one of my favorite movie stars, and I can’t totally say why he resonates so much with people like me. Both VF and NYT do a good job at articulating why Murray’s developed such a loyal following. At the expense of echoing Glazer and Kurutz, I’ll pitch in. I think people are drawn to Murray’s irreverence, which is somehow both a charming ploy and a defense mechanism for his flaws. It makes him cool as hell while incredibly relatable. Anyway, this was just your weekly reminder that Bill Murray is awesome. “Just remember, they can buy anything. But they can’t buy backbone.”

Your Calvin and Hobbes of the day.

“Dear Browns fans,

This holiday season, we would encourage you to interpret the terms ‘entertainment’ and ‘progress’ as broadly as possible. …”

And now for the random 90s song of the day. Marcy Playgrounds “Sex and Candy” remains not only one of my favorite 90s songs, but one of my favorite songs ever. It’s at once melancholy, seductive, and full of self-loathing. Pretty unremarkable music video, though.

Hanging around, downtown by myself
And I’ve had too much caffeine and I was thinking about myself
And then there she was, in platform double suede
Yeah, there she was, like disco lemonade…

1. College basketball has pep bands that may march around and stuff, too. It’s comparable, but not really. In any event, there’s not much of a professional equivalent. [↩]
2. Source: a jerk lawyer. [↩]
3. Oddly enough, Barry Sanders’ son Barry Sanders is a senior on McCaffrey’s Stanford team. [↩]
4. Ohio State’s Ezekiel Elliott does this frequently. [↩]
5. The writer of the VF story, Mitch Glazer, is one of Murray’s personal friends and was one of the primary sources in the NYT piece, both of which are kind of unusual. [↩]