Date of Degree

12-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Program

Communication Arts

Advisor

Raymond Blanton

Abstract

The musical traditions within college football illustrate diverse and storied histories for each university. Due to the amount of schools within college football and their complicated histories, the origins and meanings of these songs can be disregarded or forgotten. In an effort to understand what factors of these songs elevate their sounds to traditions, this thesis examines the soundtrack of the recently released videogame, EA SPORTS College Football 25. Through a mixed methods approach of data collection from the music recorded and licensed for the videogame, the research indicates there is not one particular sound or tempo required for a song to become a tradition. Instead, when examining the qualitative data collected, common trends like having regional identity included in the song’s sound and premiering during a time of success for the football team began to become apparent. This thesis is built upon the reciprocal feedback model of musical response (Hargreaves) that emphasizes the listener as an active participant within the communication cycle, as well as the encoding and decoding process based on social contexts. After the data collection and analysis, I suggest the additional concepts that the research indicates as well as the importance of tradition in the marketing of a university.

Additional Files
Thesis Essay (11).pdf (741 kB)
Thesis After 2nd Review
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