The Florida A&M video drawing the most searches this week is not a highlight reel. It is a fan-filmed upload of the Marching 100’s halftime show at Jackson State, recorded on Saturday, October 17, at the Tigers’ homecoming in Jackson, Mississippi, and pushed onto US trending lists within a day.
On the field, the visitors lost. Jackson State won 27-17 before a crowd of 44,173 at Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium, scoring the final 15 points after Rattlers running back Jamal Hailey had broken an 81-yard touchdown run to make it 17-12 early in the third quarter. Two late interceptions closed it out. None of that slowed the clip, which tells you how historically Black college and university (HBCU) football is consumed: the band is half the ticket, and for many viewers far from Mississippi it is the whole of it. The band’s own channel has since posted its recording of the same show, below.
A visiting band at someone else’s homecoming
Playing halftime at a rival’s homecoming is a specific kind of pressure. The home crowd came for its own band, the Sonic Boom of the South, which took that name in 1971 after members suggested it. Its director from that year until 1983, Harold J. Haughton Sr., made the Motown single “Get Ready” the band’s theme, and in February 2024 the Sonic Boom joined Usher for the Super Bowl LVIII halftime show. A visiting band in that stadium is performing for people who did not come to cheer it.
Florida A&M arrived as a 2-4 football team fresh off its first conference win, 28-27 at Alabama State on October 9. Its band arrived with a longer record than almost any college band in the country.
From 16 players to “the 100”
The school organized its first band of instruments in 1892 under Phillip Amos von Weller. Its own band history credits Nathaniel C. Adderley, uncle of the jazz brothers Nat and Cannonball Adderley, with starting the first marching unit in 1910. The modern identity is William P. Foster’s. Hired as director of bands in 1946, he found 16 members left after the Second World War and set out to build a group of 100, which is where the name comes from. He stayed 52 years, until 1998, longer than any director in the program’s history.
Foster’s methods spread well beyond Tallahassee. The Marching 100 is credited with about 30 innovations, including a double-time step at 240 steps per minute, a triple-time step at 360 and a “death-slow” cadence of 20. Do the division and the range is striking: 360 divided by 20 means the fastest tempo is 18 times quicker than the slowest, six steps every second at one end and one step every three seconds at the other, all from the same marchers.
Super Bowls, Paris and a night with Prince
The band counts five NFL Super Bowls and three presidential inaugural parades among its appearances. The one people still cite is Super Bowl XLI on February 4, 2007, at Dolphin Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. Prince’s representatives had contacted then-director Julian White in late 2006, members were told only about a month ahead, and the band played behind Prince on “Baby I’m a Star,” “1999,” “Proud Mary” and, as the rain came down, “Purple Rain.” Producers fixed illuminated tape to their uniforms so they would read on television.
Other markers come with dates attached. In 1985 the band became the fourth in the United States, and the only one from an HBCU, to receive the Sudler Trophy for college marching bands. In 1989 the French government picked it as the official US representative for the bicentennial of the French Revolution, and it marched down the Champs-Elysees on Bastille Day. In 2022 it opened Louis Vuitton’s menswear show at the Louvre during Paris Fashion Week.
The program has had hard years too. A hazing scandal in late 2011 led the university to cancel the band’s remaining performances, and it stayed off the field until the suspension was lifted on June 27, 2013, under new academic requirements and a zero-tolerance hazing policy. Women have marched on the field since 1972. In 2024 Oluwamodupe Oloyede became the first woman to serve as head drum major, and the band took the Division I Band of the Year title that season. Shelby R. Chipman has been director since 2016.
Where the rivalry stands
Going into Saturday, Jackson State led the all-time football series 14-8-2, including 4-3 in Jackson. The win moves those marks to 15-8-2 and 5-3. The Tigers also won the two previous meetings, 35-21 at homecoming in Jackson in 2024 and 41-16 in Tallahassee last season, and Florida A&M’s most recent victory remains a 28-10 result in the 2023 Orange Blossom Classic.
The schedule moves quickly from here. Florida A&M, now 2-5, hosts Arkansas-Pine Bluff for its own homecoming at Bragg Memorial Stadium in Tallahassee on Saturday, October 24, at 3 p.m. Eastern, while Jackson State, 6-1, plays at Bethune-Cookman in Daytona Beach at 1 p.m. The Rattlers’ last neutral-site date of the season is the Florida Classic against Bethune-Cookman at Camping World Stadium in Orlando on November 21.
Further reading
Image: 2C2K Photography, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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