As fans clad in scarlet and gray clapped along to “Le Régiment de Sambre et Meuse” on a warm September day in Columbus, members of Ohio State’s marching band and its alumni went about precisely spelling “Ohio” in script on Ohio Stadium’s field.The formation known as Script Ohio is a well-known college football tradition, but what made this rendition stand out was that the roughly 900 performers, ranging from freshmen to 97 years old, spelled the word four times — the most done at once by the band, which is also known by supporters as the Best Damn Band in the Land, or T.B.D.B.I.T.L. for short.“Just seeing people that old come back year after year, marching on the field and how much it means to them, it’s really cool to see that from a student perspective,” said Neil Steffens, a fourth-year sousaphone player.On Saturday in Ann Arbor, Mich., before the 112th football meeting between the Buckeyes and the Wolverines, the Ohio State band was to spell Ohio twice, on each side of Michigan Stadium, as it does for every road game. It is perhaps fitting, though, that the band performs Script Ohio for fans of its bitter rival: Michigan’s marching band was the first to spell Ohio in script.When the Buckeyes hosted the Wolverines in 1932, Michigan’s band spelled Ohio diagonally across the field.“They didn’t actually draw it out as a script; they just ran to the formation and made it on the field rather than actually writing it out as if a giant pen were writing Ohio on the field,” said Dr. Christopher Hoch, the interim director of Ohio State marching and athletic bands. “So it’s kind of a half-truth” that Michigan invented Script Ohio, he said.Ohio State’s marching band, which was formed in the late 1800s and has 225 members plus two drum majors, is the world’s largest brass and percussion band. In 1936, Ohio State, under Eugene Weigel, performed Script Ohio as it is now known.Starting from a block O, a strutting drum major leads the band through each letter’s formation until all that is left is to dot the I. The drum major then escorts a fourth- or fifth-year sousaphone player to the top of the I to do the honors, which includes bowing toward each side of the stadium before playing a solo while the band sings the chorus of “Buckeye Battle Cry.”“It’s actually a very precise drill move; it’s not just simply a follow the leader,” Hoch said. “Every member of the band has to know how to march a certain number of counts through each part of the script. Obviously the drum major leads it and has to know it better than anybody else, but the rest of the band members, there are key points in that script where they have to know exactly how many counts they have to go, say, down to the bottom of the H or up to form the I.”The Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes, the golfer Jack Nicklaus, the astronaut John Glenn, the actor Bob Hope and the longest-tenured band director, Dr. Jon Woods, have dotted the I. But the honor usually falls to veteran sousaphone players, with an internal ranking system determining the order.While Script Ohio is one of the first routines taught to band members, sousaphone players do not practice dotting the I until their fourth year, when they are guaranteed an I-dotting performance at a home game.For Steffens, dotting the I of a single Script Ohio — the most popular version — during the Buckeyes’ final home game last Saturday was bittersweet because it was also his last performance at Ohio Stadium. …
Continue Reading: Ohio State Band Shows Flair Even as It Sticks to the Script
