Sometimes it’s impossible to trace back to where and how something began. Maybe that’s not always important information.  Sometimes we can just be entertained by the fact that someone somewhere started a tradition for a basketball game that lives on and brings lots of entertainment along the way and the Basketball Goal Store staff is all for entertainment and basketball!

We didn’t say, however, that all of these traditions are necessarily “nice.”

For example, at the University of Houston during the starting line-up for the opposing team, Cougar fans immerse themselves in reading copies of The Cougar Daily. As an opposing player’s name is announced, Cougar fans yell out in unison, “Who’s he?”   By the time the home team is introduced, newspapers have been torn into bits. So when the Cougars take the floor, confetti is thrown the moment the last player is introduced to the crowd.  Toward the end of a winning game, Cougar fans jingle house keys and cars keys as a message for the team to bring home victory.  This key jingling is a message for the opposing team’s bus driver- to go ahead and start the bus so the losers can head home.

At John Brown University, hundreds of rolls of toilet paper flew from the crowd for years. The moment the team scored the first 10 points, the stadium was a messy mix of celebration and hours of clean-up.  Even with the mess, this tradition somehow stretched into three decades before it was finally forbidden. We wouldn’t be a bit surprised to learn that janitorial staff were the ones to put the clamp on the fun.

When the coach barked the order for University of Maryland’s team to kick off the season by running a few laps around campus, a tradition was born. Called “Midnight Madness,” it began in the 1970s and blossomed into an annual event for basketball lovers. These days, “Midnight Madness” includes fireworks and a laser show while the team runs the laps.

Does your school have a pre-game tradition or a signature way to begin the basketball season?  Maybe you can get a tradition started with the neighborhood on your own home court complete with a Goalrilla Basketball Goal. It might just be time to create some fun ways to celebrate the team, the fans and the game of basketball in your hometown!

-Pat of the Basketball Goal Store Blog Team