The Rice Thresher

Location: http://the.ricethresher.org/news/2007/11/30/mob_outrage_tulsa

November 30, 2007 > News > MOB makes national headlines in wake of Tulsa outrage

MOB makes national headlines in wake of Tulsa outrage

By Sarah Rutledge | Thresher Editorial Staff

The Marching Owl Band has a longstanding tradition of mocking their opponents, but after Saturday’s football game, the University of Tulsa feels the halftime show went too far, and filed a complaint to Conference USA Monday. The show, entitled, “Todd Graham’s Inferno,” lambasted former head coach Todd Graham’s decision to leave Rice last year for a head coaching position at Tulsa.

“At this point, all I’m going to say is we have filed a complaint with the conference office,” Don Tomkalski, Tulsa’s assistant athletics director of media relations, said. “We’ve put it behind us, and we’re over with it now.”

Tomkalski declined to comment further on the situation.

The complaint made national news and has been covered by the Associated Press.

The show, loosely structured around Dante’s Inferno, featured the band members searching for Graham in multiple levels of hell, including among the adulterers, the greedy and avaricious, the flatterers and traitors. Moving past Dante’s original 9 levels of hell, the show followed Graham’s descension to the 10th circle, Tulsa. The show announcer concluded the performance with a joke: “A priest, a nun and a rabbi walk into a bar. Now, I forgot how the rest of it went, but I think in the end Todd Graham is a douchebag.”

Director of Bands Chuck Throckmorton said the use of the word “douchebag” has resulted in complaints from both sides for family appropriateness at the game.

“It’s a mild vulgarity,” he said.” We’re looking for what we’re going to say about Graham that has some sort of emotional edge to it but isn’t too dirty for the kids.”

The word “douchebag” often appears on television shows with a TV-14 rating, such as “Saturday Night Live.”

Throckmorton approves each script before the show can be performed, and he said he will reevaluate these shows at the end of the season to determine what the viewers deem appropriate so he can take these concerns into account for future shows.

Throckmorton said additional complaints stemmed from a misunderstanding of a joke in the beginning of the show. The script reads: “We started our search in the second circle of Hell. We didn’t find Todd Graham among the adulterers, but your mom suggested we go lower.”

Throckmorton said Tulsa fans took this as an attack on Graham.

“The thing people are focusing on is a misunderstanding of what a ‘your mom’ joke is,” he said. “We’re not insulting Todd Graham’s mother, it’s actually insulting your mother.”

Jake Neu, the script coordinator for the MOB, said Graham is a topical issue for Tulsa and they take him seriously, whereas the shows seek to poke fun at these issues.

“When you do satire, some people are going to get offended because they don’t understand or it hits too close to home,” he said.

Neu, a Martel College senior, said he knew this show was important for students who felt betrayed after Graham left Rice for Tulsa.

“All the Rice fans were looking forward to us doing something about Todd Graham,” Neu said. “[Originally] we didn’t know how to approach it, but Dante’s Inferno had just the right amount of satire and just having fun with the show.”

During the show, Neu said he did not notice excessive booing from Tulsa during the show or any animosity during the second half of the game.

The MOB started performing satirical shows in 1970, and while shows are frequently negatively received by some audience members, the 1973 Rice-Texas A&M football game remains the most extreme case, Throckmorton said. The band came onto the field in various hats and rubber boots, mocking the corps’ strict military uniform, and made a fire hydrant formation on the field, playing “Where, Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone?” in reference to A&M’s collie mascot, Reveille.

After that halftime performance, A&M fans assaulted two band members, tore Rice flags from stadium poles and surrounded the band. The MOB had to be escorted by police to a tunnel and wait for the Aggie fans to exit the stadium before they could leave.

Throckmorton said the intent of the shows is to entertain the crowd without hurting feelings, which happened at the Rice-University of Houston game in 2001 when the MOB’s show made fun of the university’s quality of education as being sub-par.

“I’ve taken a little bit of direction from that show, and that’s why we generally try to use, like I thought we were doing with this show, a couple of misdirection segments,” he said. “Then, in the end, it’s about them.”

Throckmorton said this show differed from the usual performance in that it focused on one subject, Graham. MOB performances do not typically devote the whole show to one subject, and instead provide misdirection in a couple of segments by making fun of Rice, politics or the news. Throckmorton said this show, however, was tempered by not having all punch lines directed at Graham — the show included jabs at recently-departedTexas A&M coach Dennis Franchione.

“If you can imagine what just the random Rice student standing at the game could’ve made up to say, it would have been much edgier than what the band said, as an understatement,” Throckmorton said. “The general feel of things is that [Tulsa is] shocked that a band would make fun of somebody. I’m surprised anyone can be surprised.”

He said it remains to be seen what this complaint will mean for the band. Rice has been in C-USA for three years and this is the first complaint the band has received in the conference.

Throckmorton said he has received three e-mails so far, one of which is from a Tulsa student. He said he normally receives complaints every couple of shows, and he expects to receive more letters in the mail or through the President’s Office or Athletic Director Chris DelConte.

Dean of Undergraduates Robin Forman said Tulsa’s Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham called DelConte to express his displeasure with the show’s content, but no one from Tulsa has contacted him about the performance. The response from Rice, however, has been positive, he said.

“The sense I’ve gotten is that they view this as one of the more entertaining shows the MOB has done recently,” Forman said.

Martel College junior Matt Feaga said the show was edgier and more cohesive than the MOB shows he sees at most games without being overly offensive. If the MOB functions to represent students’ opinions, he said they did the issue justice.

“Maybe I’m biased, but I thought it didn’t really cross any lines except for maybe when they called him a douchebag at the end,” Feaga said. “I think [Tulsa] is being overly sensitive about it.”

End of article

Back to top