Where did the very first "wave" get started?

ESPN claims to have the answer. Here's part of an article that appeared on February 27, 2013:


...the origin stories of The Wave are as prevalent and well documented as Sasquatch sightings.

In the U.K. and the rest of the world The Wave is called the "Mexican Wave" because viewers across the globe first noticed it in televised games of the 1986 World Cup from Mexico. Clearly, however, The Wave was born earlier.

In fact, five years earlier in Oakland and then Seattle.

Tales of The Wave breaking before those dates may forever circulate and may one day be verified, but for now most have been debunked.

The first recorded Wave occurred in Oakland at an Athletics' playoff game against the New York Yankees on Oct. 15, 1981.

It was organized and led by professional cheerleader Krazy George Henderson and was seen by a national TV audience and captured on film. Sixteen days later on Halloween at the University of Washington in Seattle, former UW cheerleader Robb Weller -- back for a game as guest yell leader -- led fans in a Wave at Husky Stadium during the school's 42-31 victory over Stanford.

From there The Wave spread into every stadium, park and arena across the globe. Thirty-one years later it's still alive (to the joy of many and dismay of some), and recently even took on a royal hue as Prince William, the Duchess of Cambridge and British Prime Minister David Cameron were caught doing The Wave at the velodrome during the Olympics in London.

Krazy George and the University of Washington feuded for years as to who started The Wave, but The Wave of evidence is in George's favor.

After all, Oct. 15 comes before the 31st, and the shots of Oakland fans doing The Wave -- with Krazy George as their conductor -- are on the A's highlight film for 1981, says the team.

Says Krazy George, 68, who now lives in Maryland: "I don't claim I invented The Wave. I didinvent The Wave."

• • •

The Debunking

Perhaps there were fans somewhere before Oct. 15, 1981, who thought it would be a cool idea to stand up in unison with their arms extended and start a rippling Wave around and around a stadium.

Perhaps. But other origin myths before that date simply don't hold up.

For instance:

Pacific Lutheran University: A story has circulated that a cheerleader at a basketball game in the early '60s started The Wave at the school in Tacoma, yet two longtime employees -- one who worked there starting in 1964 -- say they've never heard of it.

Montreal Olympics of 1976: Says Pat Hickey of the Montreal Gazette, who covered those Games: "I was at the two venues where you might have seen a Wave (the stadium and the Forum for basketball games) and there wasn't a ripple."

Vancouver Whitecaps/Seattle Sounders: Supposedly, fans for these teams did The Wave in the late '70s. Not so, says current Whitecaps President Bob Lenarduzzi, who played for Vancouver back then, and David Falk, a NASL historian who had season tickets to the Sounders in the late '70s and also was at the Huskies game in 1981 when the Weller-led Washington Wave "rolled and rolled." "The Sounders and all of Seattle sports ... embraced it, but after 1981," says Falk.

Michigan basketball: "Not at all," says Bruce Madej, the longtime Wolverines associate athletic director, when asked if The Wave was done at Crisler Arena in the '70s. The first time The Wave hit Ann Arbor was in 1983, he says, after Michigan played the Huskies in Seattle.

• • •

The Evolution

Like Johnny Appleseed, Krazy George Henderson planted The Wave wherever he went after that A's game in 1981. But George says The Wave didn't suddenly spring up out of thin air that October day in Oakland.

"It took me three years of different forms and modifying it and changing and evolving till it got to the Oakland A's game," he says. And, actually, when he explains it, the seeds were planted more than a decade before when he was a cheerleader at San Jose State.

• • •

Back then, about 1970, he says he did a section cheer for the student body that involved one section standing up and yelling "San," the next standing and yelling "Jose" and a third doing the same thing with "State."

"It looked dynamic to see these three full sections go San ... Jose ... State," he says. "And it would go five or six times in a row. ... That cheer was like the nucleus at the start of the idea of a Wave type of idea."

After college he worked as a teacher for several years, but then Krazy George became a professional cheerleader, and he expanded on the San Jose State cheer with teams such as the minor league hockey Colorado Rockies in the late 1970s. Though the crowds were sometimes small, on big nights he could get fans to stand up by sections yelling "Go ... Rockies ... Go," but the crowd often lost interest. But when he just had sections stand up in Waves yelling "Go!" he could spark a cheer that "went all the way around the arena."

The next step in the evolution, he says, came in 1980 when he went to a high school rally in Santa Clara in the Bay Area at the request of a friend, and -- by standing at midcourt and turning and pointing to students -- sparked them to stand up in a Wave that went all the way around the small gym.

"I pointed at them, all 360 degrees, which was a pure Wave," he recalls.

That episode, he remembers, was on his mind that day at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum in 1981 when he decided to start a Wave at the A's-Yankees game.

"I never planned anything," he says, laughing. "I don't know why it hit me. About the second inning, I said, ‘I want to try this thing.'"

He says he started by organizing three adjacent sections to start The Wave on his signal, but "it took me three or four tries," for it to catch on.

"It finally took off and it went all the way around and just kept going and going and the crowd went nuts," he recalls.

At later events, Henderson says he'd rarely do The Wave more than once per game. But that day, he led it three times.

"All three tiers were doing it," he says. "It was amazing."

After that Oakland A's game he took The Wave on the road -- although he didn't call it that.

"There was no name for it," he says. "In fact, I'll give Seattle credit if they want credit for naming The Wave."

He took it to a British Columbia Lions Canadian Football League game soon after, as well as a Houston Oilers game. And, he did The Wave at Olympic soccer games in 1984, which helped introduce it to the rest of the world.


• • •

The Wave's Spread

Though Krazy George lays claim to being the first with The Wave, Jeff Bechthold, the University of Washington's director of communications for athletics, calls the issue a "little complex."

As yell leader at the school in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, Weller had led several cheers that were Wave-like --- "a section at a time standing up and sitting down (rather than ‘rolling')," Bechthold writes -- and what Weller and Husky band director Bill Bissell did that Halloween day in 1981 built off those earlier efforts, he says.

So, just as Krazy George's ideas evolved leading up to his 1981 Wave, so had Washington's. Even with that, however, Krazy George comes out the chronological winner in the "documented Wave" division.

However, The Wave's biggest springboard proved to be the University of Washington.

After the game with Stanford, The Wave became a staple at Huskies games and was taken back to campuses across the country by visiting cheerleaders. At the same time, other Seattle teams -- notably the Seahawks and Sounders -- adopted it.

After Michigan played at Washington in 1983, Wolverines fans fell in love with The Wave at Michigan Stadium, says UM's Madej. At Michigan, fans developed all sorts of twists to it such as slow-motion Waves, reverse Waves and silent Waves.

"It created more fun," says Madej. And, with the huge crowds at "The Big House" in a completely enclosed stadium, it was a perfect showpiece for The Wave as it grew into an '80s sports phenomenon and traveling to Mexico -- where it is called "La Ola" -- in time for the 1986 World Cup.

Krazy George says The Wave has lasted this long because it raises the crowd's energy and it's fun.

"You get The Wave going, you set it up, and it goes four, five, six times (around the stadium), it raises the energy of the crowd," he says. "They get more behind it. They think they've accomplished something with the team. They express themselves with the team, how they feel about them. It makes all my other cheers after I do The Wave, louder, more intense. And I can build off that."

Of course there are some fans (and many in the sports media) who despise it, saying it takes away from what's going on in the game and it's often done at the wrong time. There's even a website and campaign against it called StoptheWave.net that has led to some large Stop The Wave signs at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.

Krazy George, however, just Waves off the no-Wavers.

"Here's my theory," he says, laughing. "I love saying this. For The Wave to go and look great, you've got to have 98 percent of the people participating. That means 98 percent of the people like The Wave. They're having fun."

These days, Krazy George is still doing occasional cheerleading gigs, writing a book about his career and is always ready to defend his status as the first person to lead a verified, documented, caught-on-camera Wave.

"Now anybody can claim that (they did one) before that, but there's no witnesses, there's no video, there's no nothing," he says. "There's just nobody can substantiate any kind of claim before that."

Read the entire article...

Recommended reading: Mark Cuban on fan experience

An absolutely brilliant post from Mark Cuban about what he's trying to achieve with the gameday experience at Mavericks games. Required reading for my students this year, recommended reading for everybody else. A sample:

We in the sports business don’t sell the game, we sell unique, emotional experiences.We are not in the business of selling basketball. We are in the business of selling fun and unique experiences. I say it to our people at the Mavs at all time, I want a Mavs game to be more like a great wedding than anything else.

You know the wedding I’m talking about. The one where everyone is up dancing, smiling , cheering, laughing. The one where Grandma Ethel has her annual vodka gimlet and is trying to do the Dougie. The one where although you have no earthly idea what the Dougie is, you can’t say no to your 12 year old niece. The one where the whole place does the Macarena while laughing so hard they are crying. The one where everyone sings out loud to every song and you hug the cousin you haven’t seen in 10 years and hope you don’t see for another 10. It doesn’t matter if half the room doesn’t believe the couple will still be married at the end of the year. It matters if everyone in the place is having a great time. It matters if its the type of wedding that everyone in the room wished or wishes their wedding was or will be like this one. It matters that you leave the reception and your hands hurt from clapping , your mouth hurts from smiling so much and your throat is sore because you were laughing , singing and hollering so much. That’s a great wedding.

That’s how I want a Mavs game to be.

I want it to be very participatory. I want it to be very social. I want it to be very inclusive. I want it to be memorable. I want it to be so much fun people talk about it to their friends and can’t wait to go back. I want every parent to get tears in their eyes when they see their kids jumping up and down when the score is 2 to 0. When they are chanting Lets Go Mavs . When they are dancing and trying to get on the big screen. I want the guy on the date knowing that the longest he will have to talk is during halftime and that after the game, and until the next one, he can talk about the game itself and not have all the pressure of trying to think of something to say while his date can be relieved that she can enjoy the game without him talking. Or vice versa of course. I want everyone coming to a Mavs game to be able to find their own personal attachment to that night. I know I can’t control what happens on the court every game, but I can do my very best to make sure that no matter what the score, we have done all we can to make the fan experience like a great wedding.

Read the entire post...

All about Vancouver's green men

Puck Daddy published a good round-up earlier this week of articles and info about the Vancouver Canucks Green Men, "the body-suited super fans who mock opposing players as they stew in the penalty box at GM Place".

They also have their own page on the Vancouver Canucks website.

Washington Redskins perform at a cricket game in India

This is our first-ever post about game entertainment at cricket games. From the Washington Post:

BANGALORE, India, April 18 -- Squeezing through the gates of a sold-out 55,000-seat cricket stadium in steamy evening heat, Hashim Kerala made no attempt to hide his reason for coming to the season's opening match: Cheerleaders. Washington Redskins cheerleaders, to be specific.

In white go-go boots, yellow spangled short shorts and bikini tops, they pompomed their way onto the field, bursting right through local notions of modesty. The result was something that few in this cricket-obsessed nation thought possible: tens of thousands of male cricket fans finding it hard to keep their eyes on the game.

...

In many corners of the world, cricket is seen as slow-moving and stodgy, a vestige of British colonialism that is a cross between baseball and napping. Organizers of the newly founded Indian Premier League are hoping to drastically change that perception overseas, and bring new verve to the game for the home crowd as well.

So they've brought in 12 Redskins cheerleaders, who, in addition to performing, are mentoring a squad of Indian women. The league is also trying to win fans over to a shortened format of the game that is formally called "Twenty20," known colloquially as "cricket on crack." It condenses nearly a week of match play into three hours, with shorter "overs," which are similar to innings in baseball.

...

Beer and airline billionaire Vijay Mallya, who calls himself the king of India's good times, agrees. He owns the Bangalore Royal Challengers cricket franchise and invited the Redskins cheerleaders to the game, which pitted his team, on home turf, against the Kolkata Knight Riders.

They're owned by Shah Rukh Khan, India's top movie star. His team fielded its own cheerleaders, both male and female. But their black-and-gold uniforms were much less revealing than those worn by the Americans.

The Redskins cheer choreographer, Donald Wells, said the Indian cheerleaders he's working with are already adept at shaking their hips and staying on the beat. He noticed that Indian cheerleaders were very expressive with their hands -- Indian classical dance has countless hand motions -- and joked that they probably wouldn't need pompoms.

...

Cricket purists complain that the abbreviated version of the game is cheapening its traditional stately tone.

"Twenty20 Terror?" read the headline of an editorial in the Times of India, a major English-language newspaper. The paper noted worries that money might spoil the "good taste of cricket," but it also saw the shortened game, which was invented in England, as a sign of the times.

But it is often not only the fast-motion format of the new game that offends cricket purists.

The American women's presence has caused a stir across India, a conservative, Hindu-dominated country where even at the beach, women often shun swimwear in favor of saris, which are made of at least six yards of billowing fabric that covers everything from the neckline to the ankles, sometimes leaving the belly exposed. It's a country where the top female tennis star, Sania Mirza, who is Muslim, is often criticized for wearing short skirts on the court.

Some TV pundits pointed out that the Redskins cheerleaders are showing more skin on the cricket pitch than most Indian men will see before marriage.

At the game, the crowd roared every time the cheerleaders appeared on the big screen. "I wish I could wear a bikini, but that's not allowed for Indian women," said Bollywood actress Rakhi Sawant during a heated pregame debate on an Indian cable sports channel. Across South Asia, modesty is still an essential part of everyday life. Public affection is severely frowned on. Protests erupted last year after Richard Gere publicly kissed Bollywood starlet Shilpa Shetty.

...

Friday's event went smoothly. Though some newspapers had predicted protests, there were none. But there were Indian rock bands, smoke machines, stilt-walking butterflies, ballet dancers in clear plastic cocoons, trapeze artists, a laser-light show and a fireworks display. And, of course, cricket.

Read the entire article...

Minnesota Wild: "Retro style" game entertainment

Check out this great mini-review of the Minnesota Wild's game entertainment, by Jon Cudo over at GameOps.com.

Jon visited the Wild nearly eight years ago and loved their "retro style" game entertainment. He went back this season, and it sounds like he enjoyed it even more:

At the time the Wild we new and building their game entertainment in a somewhat retro-style. Their show was light on the current theatrics, mascots, and wacky contests and heavy on a focus on the traditions of Minnesota hockey.

Now eight years later it was a real treat to watch their game presentation which has stayed true to that traditional focus and had built and trained an amazing fan base. The show is as unique as you will see in its style and as effective as I have seen.
The team has kept many traditions, like having a celebrity introduce the game by leading all fans in a “Let’s Play Hockey!” battle cry. On this night it was Minnesota ball base legend Paul Molitor. The have also augmented their show with a nice variety of more standard fan prompt videos, which kept the show fresh without making it seem like everyone else’s show. Read more...