re: #94 BeachDem

Thanks all, for the info on the Stanford band. Wasn’t familiar with the history. Still, since when did ESPN become the arbiter of good taste?? (rhetorical question/)

They’re equal opportunity offenders.

From en.wikipedia.org….

In 1991, the University of Notre Dame banned the LSJUMB from visiting its campus after a halftime show at Stanford in which drum major Eric Selvik dressed as a nun and conducted the band using a wooden cross as a baton. (During the pregame show and first half of the game, the drum major had been dressed as an Orthodox Jew, where the wooden cross was part of a menorah-like baton.) After the halftime show, a female Notre Dame fan ran onto the field, approached from behind the unsuspecting Selvik, and forcibly ripped the nun habit off of his head. Selvik pursued and regained his habit from the attacker, who in the scuffle for the habit told the drum major he was “going to hell for this.”[4]

In 1992, the Athletic Department pressured the LSJUMB to fire its announcers after one used the phrase “No chuppah, no schtuppa” at a San Jose State University game halftime show.

In 1994, the Band was disciplined after nineteen members skipped a field rehearsal in Los Angeles to play outside the L.A. County Courthouse during jury selection for the O. J. Simpson trial. The band’s song selection included an arrangement of The Zombies’ “She’s Not There.” Defense lawyer Robert Shapiro described the incident to the media as “a new low in tasteless behavior.”[5] Later that year, during the halftime show of the football game against USC (where Simpson had played football and won the 1968 Heisman Trophy), band members drove a white Ford Bronco with bloody handprints around the Stanford Stadium track,[6] an obvious allusion to the low-speed chase in which police followed a white Bronco carrying Simpson around the Los Angeles area.

In 1997, the Band was again disciplined for shows lampooning Catholicism and the Irish at a game against Notre Dame. The Band put on a show entitled “These Irish, Why Must they Fight?” Besides the mocking supposedly stereotypical Irish-Catholic behavior, there was a Riverdance formation, and a Potato Famine joke, drawing criticism[7] for its “tasteless” portrayal of Catholics. Both the band and the Stanford President Gerhard Casper subsequently apologized for the band’s behavior.[8] Subsequently, the Band was prohibited from playing at games against Notre Dame for two years.[9]

In 2002 and 2006, the Band was sanctioned for off-the-field behavior, including violations of the University alcohol policy.

In 2004, the Band drew national attention and Mormon ire for joking about polygamy during a game against Brigham Young University. The Dollies appeared in wedding veils with the Band Manager of the time kneeling and “proposing” to each in turn as the announcer referred to marriage as “the sacred bond that exists between a man and a woman… and a woman… and a woman… and a woman… and a woman.” [10]