Mike's Guide to Life: Ride high by understanding the Cal Poly 'Fight Song'

If there is one single thing that every Cal Poly student knows, it would obviously be the "Cal Poly Fight Song." OK, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. Let me start over. If there is one single thing that barely any Cal Poly student knows1, it would be the Cal Poly "Fight Song."

There is a good reason though that so few of us would know the words to our song. Basically, the words are ridiculous. While many know the line "Ride high you Mustangs" to start the song, the rest just sort of trails off2. This, of course, is where I come in for this week's column. While I have no idea what the song means, I'll make some highly educated guesses and you'll just have to either go with what I write or continue to be baffled on your own.

The first line, as I mentioned before, is "Ride high you Mustangs." Now, it would be extremely immature of me to make any sort of drug jokes here. If I said that this line implies that the person in our beloved mascot Musty at games should be high that would be wrong. If I said that our football coach Rich Ellerson took that advice in our loss to South Dakota and smoked so much between the third and fourth quarters that he forgot to tell the team to play defense, that would also be wrong. Get my point yet? I think I'm just going to leave this line alone for now, and move onto the next one...

"Kick the frost out, burn the breese" comes next. This line is completely arrogant of our team to have in the song. Obviously, San Luis Obispo is a warm weather town for the most part. Encouraging everyone to "kick the frost out" is purely there to boost morale. The only thing I worry about is that if there is frost, I as a Cal Poly student am not kicking it out. I want to make sure that I am serving my school, so hopefully the frost is being fully taken care of. As far as the "burn the breese" part goes, I'm going to go with the heavy research that I actually did for this piece3. So, Breese is a town in Illinois. Their community's slogan? "Famous for Friendliness." You gotta be kidding me. I'm not sure what Cal Poly's huge beef is with the city of Breese, Ill., and really, I don't think burning it would be right.

After further research, I found that our president, Warren Baker, went to Notre Dame4, which is in Indiana. Yes, the same Indiana that is right next to Illinois. There has to be some connection there. Regardless of this connection, we must back President Baker and get rid of friendliness when we're in sporting battles. So metaphorically, let's burn the shit out of Breese, and the rest of the competition.

Then, after another "Ride high you Mustangs," comes "The bow wows we'll knock to their knees." If you have been reading my articles each week, you would know of my knowledge of rap music5. Because of this, I know exactly what this part of the Fight Song means.  I’m going to assume now that everyone falls in love with the song “Jump” by Kriss Kross the firt time they hear it.  The backwards pants wearing kids were huge in the early 90’s, but then what happened?  Young rappers like Lil’ Romeo and Lil’ Bow Wow came into the music world.  The result?  The forgetting of true kid rap legends Kriss Kross.  This is something that isn’t just a personal problem to Cal Poly, but a national problem that will forever be remembered in our Fight Song.

After that line, we yell a semi tribal, "Hi Ki Yi," which might be the line that makes the most sense in the song.

Following that, is "Chin the moon and do it right." This one actually makes sense in my head, but might make too much sense considering the rest of the lyrics in this song. I see this as how us students should keep our heads up, reach for the sky, never give up and do any other related cliché that applies.

"Ride high and cut a rusty" follows. We already know what it means to "ride high" and the "cut a rusty" part is from the ghetto roots of our Musty, as it basically says to shank anyone and anything that is slightly different than us6.

And finally, together we yell, "Fight! Fight! Fight!" as we have all battled through the meaning of the Cal Poly "Fight Song."

1 When I say "barely," I am basically just giving credit to the Cal Poly Band and half the football team for knowing the song.
2 Sort of like how I can only remember parts of "My Humps" when I'm at a party and trying to sing the song.
3 I googled the word "breese," and the first thing that came up was www.breese.com. Look, an actual footnote in one of my pieces.
4 www.president.calpoly.edu/bio.asp. Another legit footnote. Holla! Oh, FYI, Baker also wishes he had more time to ski and golf
5 "Mike's Guide to How to be a Gangsta Rapper" Oct. 2006. BAM! Footnoting myself. Watch out.
6 In the same way that a rabbi can't stand a rabbit.