The Nevada Fight Song
HAIL to our sturdy team, loyal and true,
MARCH, march on down the field oh Silver and Blue!
We’ll give a long cheer for NEVADA’s team,
See them break through again,
Fighting for our own U of N to victory.
N – E – V – A – D – A
NEVADA!
The Law of the Jungle
“The Law of the Jungle” is a poem from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. It is recited before each home football and basketball game in a chant led by the student section.
Now this is the Law of the Jungle — as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back –
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
The chorus is followed by a wolf’s howl played over the stadium sound system and echoed throughout the venue by the fans in attendance.
The Blue Crew
One of Nevada’s youngest traditions, the Blue Crew was a student booster organization that debuted in the 2003-04 academic year. The crew was started as a way to bring out the spirit of the Silver and Blue in current students. As many of the teams began to claim, or re-claim for some, success and glory, it become necessary for the students to organize under a single banner to show their undying support for the Pack.
The Blue Crew gets bonuses, as in a frequent flyer program. Each member presents an ID and garners points for coming to events. They get free Blue Crew T-shirts from Pepsi (the university’s soft drink supplier) and swipe cards for discounts at area stores.
Painting the “N”
Hillside letters are a common site in the Western U.S. and on the side of Peavine Peak proudly sits the “N” of Nevada. Every fall during the football season, a group of avid supporters and student make the trek up the hill to add a fresh coat of paint to the “N.”
The Fremont Cannon
The Fremont Cannon – one of college football’s largest and most expensive “trophies” – is now over 30 years old and is the prize sought after when two in-state rivals, The University of Nevada and UNLV, meet each fall in football.
Nevada’s two university football teams annually play for the right to house the mountain howitzer each season. Today’s cannon is a replica of a gun that accompanied Captain John C. Fremont on his expedition through Oregon, Nevada and California in 1843-44.
The replica cannon was reconstructed in 1970 as the gift of the Nevada Mines Division of Kennecott Copper Corporation to the students of the two campuses of the University of Nevada. It was built from engineering and technical drawings from the military archives of the United States Army.
Bill Ireland, a 1952 Nevada alumnus who was UNLV’s first football coach, deserves credit for connecting athletics boosters on each end of the state with Howard Winn, Kennecott general manager in White Pine County. Ireland, a McGill native, was able to sell Winn on the idea along with Wolf Pack boosters such as Bill Parish, a 1945 alumnus who played for the Wolf Pack in the early 1940s.
“One of the things I sold Kennecott on was that if they supported it, this would truly become a statewide trophy, including the cow counties,” said Ireland, who coached baseball and football at Nevada before a distinguished career as head football coach and later athletic director at UNLV.
The Wolf Pack won the first game between the universities in 1969, but the Rebels were the first team to capture the cannon in 1970 by a score of 42-20. The winner is allowed to paint the cannon its school colors while it has possession of it.
“It’s the most symbolic “trophy” for winning a state championship in the country and as much a part of the football tradition as the game itself,” Nevada head coach Chris Ault said. “The Fremont Cannon is such a monumental trophy that we built a spot for it when we built Cashell Fieldhouse in the 1980’s.”
Today, the cannon resides in its “home” in the renovated Cashell Football Center. A special alcove was reserved for the cannon when renovations were completed a couple of years ago. More on the Fremont Cannon.
Nevada Wolf Pack Athletics
