Alma maters: the sluggish, sway ever-so-slowly songs played at the end of the game when you’re either mooning about in the stands basking in gloatfog or running for the exits to vomit repeatedly following a loss…


Hit the smite button. Why aren’t you hitting the SMITE button, God? WHYYYYYY?

…yes! Just like that one. See, if there were a God in heaven, a huge, Monty Python-style foot would have crushed Wes Bynum at that instant, and joy would have reigned throughout the land. But no huge God-foot appeared, thus confirming we humans are just elaborate methods of displacing energy in one big return to cold, frosty galactic equilibrium.

Um…where…oh, yes. Alma maters. You end up singing them at the end of games, or more commonly, hearing them droned by the band while fifty people sing along in the corner of the stadium. The idea comes from some 19th century idea that singing together helps bring people together, unifies them under the banner of a common identity, etc, ideas that all sound pretty pinko to us in the first place. For the most part, singing in groups serves as a combo birth control device and exercise in humility, and if you want to do that all by yourself, that’s why the modern man has karaoke: it serves the same purpose but adds alcohol and individual embarrassment to the package.

But for tradition’s sake, we want the alma mater to surivive, simply because we like old things of a laughably old and quaint nature like the Panama Canal and fear of AIDS. It just needs to be pepped up a bit for modern times, really–thus our newest endeavor, Your Alma Modern. To be fair we begin, line by line, with Florida’s alma mater.

UF Alma Mater

Florida, our Alma Mater,
thy glorious name we praise.
All thy loyal sons and daughters,
a joyous song shall raise.

Hmm…thy sounds gay. Like, fifth grade gay, or at the very least excessively churchy. Axe those or we’re all break out in hives of Clay Aikeninity. Also, the Latin? No one knows what the hell it means. We do, of course: alma mater means “kickass school,” which we’ll substitute there instead of–again–gayass Latin that will get you beat up, nerd. This is a song with football-cain’t be no gayness ’bout it. Also, the poetic inversion? Dead to us. “A vigorous fucking of the skull, our team will give to you?” No way. Our football team wills straight skullfuck your ass, and we will do just that–even if that’s not anatomically possible, sir. We sing the song of a team that will start with the impossible and move to the improbable by lunch.

There palm and pine are blowing,
where southern seas are flowing,
Shine forth thy noble gothic walls,
thy lovely vine clad halls.

Aaaaggghh, welts of sheer prissy fifth-grade gay with the “thys.” Palm and pine are too specific, since most Floridians don’t even think of trees as living things with species names, but rather understand them as things of varying degrees of hardness you crash your car, plane, boat, or better still, your airboat into when trashed off 2 for 1 drink night at Captain Shankey’s on the causeway. And once you’re busted for that, man, you have to ride a bike to work at the car wash. And that’s a tough pill for any 34 year old to swallow, but that’s life–get some streamers on that thing and ride with all the pride you can muster.

Oh, and more inversion: are the walls on fire? And who let the vines and shit grow all over them? Gothic walls? As in covered in My Chemical Romance posters? Florida students are far more club music and DMB compatible, mostly because of demographics, but also because wearing black and long sleeves in subtropical weather is a bitch no matter how committed you are to your look.

Neath the orange and blue victorious,
our love shall never fail.
There’s no other name so glorious,
all hail, Florida, hail!

Ok, some patently false statements here just beg for demolition. There’s no other name so glorious? Please. There’s a zillion other names as glorious. Just a few can be pulled straight from the imagination and real life alike:

–Murderface
–Hrothgar Tankraper
–Yourhighness Morgan
–Sancho Ancho
–Kimbo Slice
–Kevlar Slice (that’s Kimbo’s son. No fucking lie.)
–Johnny Benzedrine

All of these names are arguably more glorious than “Florida.” We’ll stick with “hail,” though, since hailing involves the shaking of swords, shields, and lots of handshakes that involve grabbing your partner’s elbow as part of the handshake.

So our rewritten version would look something like this in order to accommodate the sensibilities of modern Florida:

UF Alma Mater

Florida, the school we went to,
We’ll all sing you a song.
Everyone who went to the school,
Should learn to sing this song.

A place with lots of trees,
Did we mention lots of tree-ees?
There’s buildings, and they’re made of brick
And the parking is a bitch.

Orange and blue are our school colors
You can’t match them with shit.
Florida, Florida, hit a hiiiiiiiiigh note,
Hail Hail! Hail Hail Hail Hail!

YEAH. That’s much improved.