Hook 'em hokum

 Once upon a Michigan-Notre Dame football game, the student section at Notre Dame Stadium sang along to the UM fight song. It was hilarious.

Hilarious, because their version went like this:

Cheer, cheer, for Mich-i-gan,

The a**holes of the world!

I suppose in the Big 12 they'd have been penalized for lyric interference or so some such thing. Unsportsmanlike conduct! Fifteen yards!

I say this because it got out this week the Big 12 will penalize any opposing player who flashes an upside-down Hook 'Em Horns hand signal (aka "Horns Down") at a Texas player. Or perhaps even if said player flashes it at his own fans.

This will be regarded as taunting, the Big 12 decrees. That a Texas player flashing the actual Hook 'Em Horns sign at an opposing player could also be regarded as taunting apparently has not occurred to the conference hoo-ha's.

Or maybe it has, but ... you know, Texas. Got all that money, and them that's got money get to play by a different set of rules in America. 

Still, this is silly even for college athletics bureaucrats. Which does not mean the Blob is now going to take off on some rant about political correctness, mind you.

This is because the Blob despises people who do that. After all, they never seem to recognize that in decrying "political correctness", they impose their own version of it. They just don't recognize it as such.

Anyway, this is silly. And it sucks a lot of air out of the good old-fashioned enmity that makes college football in particular so much better than the antiseptic Sunday version.

College football is its rivalries, after all, and rivalries do not adhere the Marquess of Queensberry rules. That's why they're so much fun.

It's why Army/Navy can prank Navy/Army (or Harvard/Yale can prank Yale/Harvard) by infiltrating its flip-card section so the messages that pop up are not, shall we say, the intended ones. Or why UCLA pranksters can paint Tommy Trojan blue-and-gold the week of the USC game. Or. yes, why the Notre Dame student section can rewrite Michigan's fight song.

This sort of thing harms no one and adds much to the proceedings, and it transcends college sports. Who hasn't heard a student section at a high school basketball game respond to a rival student section's "Over-rated!" jeer with "Nev-er rated!"?

That's some classic stuff right there.

As is an opponent responding to Hook 'Em Horns with Horns Down.

Come on, Big 12. Grow a sense of humor why doncha.