[Redrum]

Actually, maybe just Sandy Barbour faked it.  But at the kal women's appearance at the NCAA volleyball tournament kal apparently hired a HS band,  slapped some kal t-shirts on 'em and sent them forth to fake support for the volleyballers.  An economy move, apparently.  Who knows,  maybe next football season,  scheduled for a fake football stadium,  they'll hire an entire kal marching band from the Phillipines to save even more money.

http://espn.go.com/ncaa/blog/_/name/coll...765004/cal

[Redrum]

Actually, maybe just Sandy Barbour faked it.  But at the kal women's appearance at the NCAA volleyball tournament kal apparently hired a HS band,  slapped some kal t-shirts on 'em and sent them forth to fake support for the volleyballers.  An economy move, apparently.  Who knows,  maybe next football season,  scheduled for a fake football stadium,  they'll hire an entire kal marching band from the Phillipines to save even more money.

http://espn.go.com/ncaa/blog/_/name/coll...765004/cal

[Hank 91]

It might sound like I'm defending them, but I'm not. This is actually a pretty common practice, especially in the NCAA basketball tournament. A school can either A) pay for roughly a hundred people to fly across the country for one or two basketball games, or B) donate a few hundred bucks to a local high school band to play the same fight songs. It's not done by everyone, but it's certainly done.

[Hank 91]

It might sound like I'm defending them, but I'm not. This is actually a pretty common practice, especially in the NCAA basketball tournament. A school can either A) pay for roughly a hundred people to fly across the country for one or two basketball games, or B) donate a few hundred bucks to a local high school band to play the same fight songs. It's not done by everyone, but it's certainly done.

[Viking_Guy]

Hank--

Just for some additional perspective, the NCAA actually provides support for a small band to travel to men's and women's tournament games (it used to be 25 people, plus 10 "spirit" people - cheerleaders, mascots and the like), and the school can pay for 5 more.  So a maximum of 30 musicians.

It DOESN'T provide support for any other sport.  LSJUMB actually paid their own way to the volleyball tournament a couple of years ago, in part because the team and coaching staff has always been very supportive of the band, and the AD couldn't support it as they had in the past because of their financial woes.

Football bowl game travel is funded by the bowl payout, and the limits on the size of a band that can be sent are mostly at the discretion of the specific school - e.g. at both the Sun Bowl and the Orange Bowl, Oklahoma and Va Tech spent a lot of money they didn't have to to bring mammoth bands.

On paying local students to play, it's a common practice; Notre Dame almost always gets a local Catholic high school to send its band to play at their away games (I think it was Mitty or SI one recent game at Stanford).

VG

[Viking_Guy]

Hank--

Just for some additional perspective, the NCAA actually provides support for a small band to travel to men's and women's tournament games (it used to be 25 people, plus 10 "spirit" people - cheerleaders, mascots and the like), and the school can pay for 5 more.  So a maximum of 30 musicians.

It DOESN'T provide support for any other sport.  LSJUMB actually paid their own way to the volleyball tournament a couple of years ago, in part because the team and coaching staff has always been very supportive of the band, and the AD couldn't support it as they had in the past because of their financial woes.

Football bowl game travel is funded by the bowl payout, and the limits on the size of a band that can be sent are mostly at the discretion of the specific school - e.g. at both the Sun Bowl and the Orange Bowl, Oklahoma and Va Tech spent a lot of money they didn't have to to bring mammoth bands.

On paying local students to play, it's a common practice; Notre Dame almost always gets a local Catholic high school to send its band to play at their away games (I think it was Mitty or SI one recent game at Stanford).

VG