Who is the "We Are ..." school?

Roger found this on SportsIllustrated.com and asked me to post...

When I first heard the title of Matthew McConaughey's new movie, We are Marshall, I was confused. I had always associated the "We are ..." cheer with another university, Penn State. Having gone to school in the South, I was familiar with Marshall football and the tragic history of the team's plane crash in 1970. I was not at all aware, however, that they had co-opted the "We are ..." cheer until the movie trailers for this film launched en masse.

Sure enough, a few Google searches reveals that the school only recently adopted the chant about 20 years ago, making its use in the movie an anachronism at best and an attempt to perpetuate a falsehood at worst. Thanks to the massive multimedia blitz that only a Hollywood movie can manifest, millions of people now believe that Marshall, and not Penn State, is in fact the "We are ..." school.

I'm not a Penn State grad, but if I were, I would find this trend to be very upsetting. What is to stop other schools from clutching away at this prized Nittany Lion tradition even further? After all, chants don't get any more accessible than "We are..." Georgetown hoops already has gotten into the act.

If you are wondering what the harm is in all this, then you must not have been paying attention when the Atlanta Braves and Kansas City Chiefs stole the Florida State warchant back in the early '90s. I still get shivers thinking about it. Imagine yourself walking down the street 20 years from now and hearing somebody yell, "Rock, Chalk, Wildcat," or "Hail to the Victors" breaking out at a game that doesn't involve the Michigan Wolverines. I dare say it would shake our civilization to its core.

-- Jacob Luft