Gordon Monson: Why has BYU booted its band from basketball games? Let the trumpets and tubas blow.

When BYU pep band members went to set up their instruments in the Marriott Center to play at a recent Cougar basketball game, as student-musicians had heretofore done for decades, they were told to pack back up and leave, told there were no seats for them because someone in authority at the school decided — for some yet untold reason — that the band’s sounds and services were no longer needed.

No soup or seats for you!

This rejection has caused a bit of a kerfuffle at the school because more than a few people — including band members themselves — actually like having a pep band play live music at BYU games. More than 5,000 folks — and counting — have signed petitions to get the band back in the building, in seats adjacent to the student section, but so far, at least, BYU has stood firm in not just not giving back the traditional seats, but not giving the public a clear explanation why.

I put in a call for comment to BYU communications folks, but they did not respond.

Often a decision comes down to money, the school wanting the cash those seats would reap were they to be sold at the going rate. If that’s the case here — guess with me, now — the money-grubbers at the school should quit being so … grubby, and let the music be played, let the kids play their music for the benefit of everybody else on hand, including the team on the court.

C’mon, BYU, free the freaking band.

If there’s another reason, what could it be? According to one well-placed source, it might come down to pettiness. Many members of the pep band are also members of the school’s marching band, and because of what amounts to scheduling conflicts, a shortage of personnel, and music classes starting again with all the other school classes in January, the pep band hadn’t shown up for basketball until the aforementioned recent game. There was discussion that if the band wasn’t there at earlier games, it wouldn’t be permitted at games now and moving forward. It’s worth noting that the pep band first showing up in January has been in place for a number of years. And that students now have been sitting in the seats in previous years reserved for the band.

Maybe some frumpy fans at college games — basketball or football — don’t give a flying trombone or a banging drum about live music in the arena. They come to watch the action, the competition, the back and forth on the floor or on the field, not to have their ears blasted by some tired version of Barry Manilow tunes or the theme music from “Jaws” or a Tijuana Trash rendition of the school’s fight song.

Those sourpusses are just flat wrong, other than maybe the deal about having had their fill of “Copa Cabana.” Pep and marching bands play a significant role in contributing to what is the essence, the tradition of the college sports experience.

Take it from someone who has heard darn near every trumpeted- and tuba-ed-up version — bad and good — of “Uptown Funk” and “Sweet Caroline” and “Seven Nation Army.” If I had five bucks for every time I’ve heard “Eye of the Tiger” at a game, I’d buy, outright, the seats for BYU’s pep band myself.

Beyond the entertainment value of having the band there, the energy created by the musicians adds to the atmosphere and probably to the competitive spirit of the athletes, too. Some might say, just pipe in recorded music, like the Jazz made a habit of doing, starting way back in the day when they played “YMCA” and “Mony, Mony.”

It’s not the same, the only exception being what Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls teams did in their intro — and what other NBA teams copied — with “Sirius” by the Alan Parsons Project. Now that was fantastic stuff. Still can’t hear those guitar chords without thinking of sitting in the United Center for Bulls playoff games. Whoever said sports and music don’t mix unfortunately never had ears to hear that song pumping in at those games.

The Jazz some 40 years ago had a live band play at the old Salt Palace during games, but that didn’t quite have the same oomph as college kids blowing effort and energy into and out of their horns.

For an off-beat column, I once sat at an NCAA Tournament game between UConn and Tennessee-Chattanooga with the 29-member pep bands, switching from the Husky band to the Moccasins group at the half. I’ll never forget that experience, how amped up those students were from start to finish and the effects they tried to have on their teams inside the Huntsman Center.

“If there’s a spiritual core to college basketball, it resides somewhere between the bass drummers and the trombone blowers,” I wrote. “A spot where spit flies freely and hope dies hard. Where hoop players are honored and refs are hated, where the notes, the cheers, the insults are loud and proud.”

One of the UConn numbers had lyrics that went like this: “Watch out where these Huskies go, don’t you eat that yellow snow.”

A trumpet player told me between songs: “We just blow our lips off to support the team. We blow until our faces turn blue. We get so into it that after the game we go back to the hotel room and pass out on the bed.”

Said a tuba player: “You’ve got to understand that basketball in Connecticut is huge. People there are crazy for it. We’re here as an extension of that. Anything we can do to help, we do.”

Their help worked. UConn was up 20 by halftime.

That same tuba player, named Murphy, observed the opposing Moccasin band and said: “They are a good group. Better than their basketball team. The only thing I don’t like about them is they put their trombone players on the back row. That way, all the other band members get sprayed with spit. Our trombone players are in front, so all the spray flies toward the cheerleaders down on the floor.”

Sitting with the Tennessee-Chattanooga band, one member there, his head drenched in blue-and-gold paint, growled: “Our job is not only to support our team, but also to get on the other team’s players and the refs — until they crack. We’re volatile. In Chattanooga, we’re known as the world’s most dangerous band.”

Not dangerous enough. UTC went on to lose by 30 points.

But the Moccasins yelled their chants and blew their horns straight until the end, when the world’s most dangerous band so sadly played, “Heartbreak Hotel.”

Ever since then, and probably even before that, I’ve loved bands at college games. Student-musicians hitting their notes and making their noise are worth every seat they take up.

BYU should get back on the ball and let its enthusiastic band play, sprayed spit and all. They are the spiritual core of college sports.