Thousands of Mississippi State fans sneak their cowbells through the gates of Davis Wade Stadium during home football games, defying security guards and a Southeastern Conference policy banning artificial noisemakers. However, what those defiant fans may not know is that the ruling could be unconstitutional anyway.Mark Goodman, associate professor of communication at MSU, said the conference’s ban on cowbells violates the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
He said State cowbells at football games are considered a form of symbolic speech and can only be limited in unusual circumstances.
“The key term is legitimate state interest. If [noisemakers] directly interfered with playing football games, then the ban would be acceptable,” Goodman said. “For example, banning noisemakers from Humphrey Coliseum is fine. The cowbells in the Hump would shatter people’s eardrums.”
The SEC, which has had a ban on artificial noisemakers since 1975, has taken increasing measures to prevent their use by including penalizing the team of the noisemaking crowd. In 2006, the NCAA granted special permission to the SEC to retain a penalty structure for artificial noisemakers, after the NCAA eliminated a “crowd noise” rule used to enforce noisemaker violations.
The adopted penalty structure gives the offending team a warning on the first violation, a 5-yard penalty on the second and a 15-yard penalty on the third.
Goodman said the SEC’s prohibition of artificial noisemakers is content-based.
The cowbells are banned because of their use to support MSU, not because of their actual impact on the football game, he said.
“In my reading of the law, it’s unconstitutional. It’d be like banning T-shirts with Mississippi State on them; it’s an arbitrary decision,” Goodman said.
MSU athletic director Larry Templeton declined to comment on the issue directly, instead referencing the SEC’s written policies.
The SEC by-laws state that artificial noisemakers may not be brought into or used at any sporting event and attendees are made aware of the policies on the ticket.
Goodman said purchasing the ticket should not be considered a contract to the policy.
“I don’t believe those regulations on the ticket can be arbitrarily written if that is the case,” he said.
The by-laws detail the appropriate time and usage of stadium loudspeakers, as well as the allowance of cheerleaders and bands, which are considered institutionally-controlled and do not fall under the artificial noisemaker policy.
The extent of the policy’s enforcement during the game is the responsibility of the officials monitoring the event, SEC football officials coordinator Rogers Redding said.
He said although it is a policy, penalties are only levied if the noisemakers are deemed disruptive to the game.
“In general, it’s loud on the field, and the official will usually not notice it unless it’s destructive and significantly disrupting the game,” he said.
Redding said officials are often paying more attention to the gameplay, so noise penalties against teams are rare.
“I haven’t had to enforce the policy in my personal experience; it’s fairly uncommon,” Redding said. “If it becomes a distraction to the referee, it is enforced but [officials] aren’t at the games with their ears cocked listening for noisemakers.”
The threat of penalties has not deterred students like sophomore biological science major Patrick Beatty from bringing artificial noisemakers.
Beatty said instead of an 80,000-plus capacity stadium, MSU’s home-field advantage is its fans’ cowbells.
“I bring my cowbell to every game; it’s part of the atmosphere,” he said. “We have a relatively small stadium, and without cowbells it doesn’t get really loud. Other teams could bring [noisemakers], [but] they just choose not to.”
Freshman biochemistry major Brooke Harris said the cowbell is a form of expression for MSU students, similar to the way students at other universities have organized cheers or dances.
“I think we should be allowed to have them [because] it makes the game more fun,” Harris said. “Every team has their own cheers, [and] our cowbells are ours.”
Goodman said teams who lose to MSU, which does not have an historically dominant football program, would rather blame the cowbells than their own performances. State fans, he said, should not have to pay the penalty.
“Give me my cowbell or give me death,” Goodman said.