In 1972, Texas A&M president Dr. Jack K. Williams joked to a state legislative committee that "it is Chickasaw Indian for ‘Beat the hell out of the University of Texas.’”
To get to the bottom of this, we’ll need to go back and look at the ridiculous things American football fans were yelling in the late 1800s.
In the early days of college football, Princeton and Yale were among the first powerhouses, and their fans came up with cheers and songs that quickly spread to other schools across the country.
Two examples: In the mid- to late-1800s, Princeton students had a “locomotive” cheer, in which the students chanted syllables at an increasing speed, and a “rocket” cheer — this was the classic “sis-boom-bah” chant, based on the sound of a firecracker hissing into the sky and exploding, followed by spectators saying “ahh!”
Both of those chants made it to Texas A&M, where our “Locomotive” is still heard at every Midnight Yell Practice (“Rah rah rah rah, T-A-M-C …”), and there have been occasional attempts to revive the “Skyrocket” yell.
As you can see, many cheers had words or syllables that were chosen primarily for the noise they could produce.
That’s how Yale’s “Long Cheer” took shape. In 1884, students took bits of Aristophanes’ play The Frogs — which had been a smash hit comedy in ancient Greece — and put the words into a cheer they used at a baseball game, according to Yale Alumni Magazine.
