Pump Up The Jam

One of my favorite topics that blends sports with pop culture and gives some insight into the personality of athletes is entrance songs. Back in college when I hosted a sports talk radio show I used to ask my guests what song they would choose to walk up to the plate to if they were a big leaguer. I covered the songs I would consider in October of 2010. Well last week while I was working on The Scott Van Pelt Show, Scott, Ryen Russillo (his co-host), and their guest for this particular segment, former NFL quarterback Tim Hasselbeck, had an impromptu discussion about what song their high school basketball teams took the court to. I forget what Scott said, but Ryen and Mr. Elisabeth Hasselbeck, both white guys from Massachusetts, said Jump Around by House of Pain. Very fitting. My cousin who will not be named even though he’s been named a few times on this blog was a big hooper in high school. In fact, he was a walk on at Fairfield during our freshmen year of college. I don’t recall what his high school team’s entrance song was, but I remember him telling me about a team they played that came out to this…


The team entered the court at about the :20 mark

Now obviously everyone didn’t play high school basketball, so I think it’s fair to broaden this discussion to the songs that were on your high school football/soccer/basketball/hockey/baseball/lacrosse warm up tape. The interesting thing about team warm up songs is that it’s usually only a few people that select the songs for the entire team. This means that more often than not the captains, or elder statesmen on the team, both made the pregame mix tape and had control over the stereo in the locker room.

My first relevant memory to warm up music is as a 7th grader playing modified football. We didn’t play our games on a field with a sound system, so the music we played in the locker room was near and dear to our hearts. I kid you not the 8th graders played this song on repeat before and after every practice and every game all year.



I’m pretty sure it was the only song that was played in the locker room the entire season. FYI- We might have had 1-2 black kids on our entire team.

I don’t remember what we played in the locker room when we were 8th graders, but that was our only chance to choose for ourselves until our senior year because the JV and Varsity football teams shared the same locker room. At my high school the football team had t-shirts made every year with a motto on the back. More often than not the motto was the name of a rock song that was used to pump the team up. One year it was Welcome to the Jungle. Another year it was Seek and Destroy. Obviously the locker room was filled with plenty of Guns n’ Roses and Metallica those years.

Here are a few other songs that were played ad naseum in our locker room and in the stadium during pre-game warm-ups.

Metallica- No Leaf Clover


Excalibur Theme


Ozzy Osbourne- Crazy Train


Disturbed- Down With the Sickness


Disturbed- Are You Breathing?


System of a Down- Toxicity


System of a Down- Chop Suey


AC/DC- Hells Bells

By the time senior year rolled around my friends and I had grown so accustomed to these songs that many of them stayed on our pre-game mix. They became so ingrained in my head that even to this day when I hear No Leaf Clover by Metallica I can’t help but think of stretching and doing calisthenics. I don’t actually stop what I’m doing and start stretching (although that’d be like Pavlov’s experiment on crack). I just picture myself doing the stretches and drills as a scrawny 17 year old.

I left out a few songs that were on our pre-game football CD because some of them are a part of my personal top 3 pump up songs of all time. I became so attached to two of the following three songs that I made sure that they were on our pre-game lacrosse CD as well. The last song, my number 1 pump up song of all time, didn’t come out until halfway through my senior year football season, but it was prominently featured on our lacrosse mix.

3.) Metallica- Enter Sandman



I hate the Yankees, but I respect the shit out of Mariano Rivera. If this song doesn’t make you want to run through a wall and tackle someone then there’s something wrong with you.


2.) AC/DC- Thunderstruck



My body becomes so filled with adrenaline when I hear this song before an athletic event that my body starts shaking when I hear the lyric, “I was shaking at the knees.” Quick sidenote, I recently learned a drinking game set to this song that’s a lot of fun. Find a group of 4-6 people (you can do more, but it will take longer to get drunk) and select who will go first. The person who has been picked to start begins drinking at the first “Thunder” and keeps going until the next “Thunder”, which is when the next person starts to drink, and so on.


1.) The White Stripes- Seven Nation Army



As Deadspin recently noted, this song has conquered the sports world and I’m proud to say that I was getting amped up to the bass line from the get go. This song got me so fired up that I was in a trance like state after hearing it. I became a very aggressive, violent person shortly after warming up to this tune.


What song did your highschool basketball team enter the court to? Or what was on your high school warm up CD?