Radioactive

I have noticed with the unveiling of Baylor’s new uniforms that the hype video for said uniforms and another video revolving around Baylor football both had the song "Radioactive" by Imagine Dragons in the background. I personally happen to think that this is a great song to describe Baylor football and I’ll be going through stanza by stanza to further explain why.

The beginning about 25 seconds of the song is a soft building melodic tone with the chorus of "whoa" being sang over and over. This represents the off-season for Baylor. It’s not the season so talk about the football team, outside of this site, of course, isn’t as common as the fall months. The melody is soft, but gives you a sense that something is in the works. It is a building melody, so I draw the similarities not just to what is going for the team building for the 2013 season, but also the new stadium.

All of a sudden the bass drops at about 28 seconds in the song and really wakes up the listener. The lyrics for this portion read,

I'm waking up to ash and dust

I wipe my brow and I sweat my rust

I'm breathing in the chemicals

If the previous melody didn’t draw enough similarities to the new stadium being built on the Brazos, then this definitely does. The new stadium is being built, and it will one day stand through all of the ash and dust that was creating while it was being built. Workers wipe their brow and get to work on one of Baylor’s great recruiting pitches they have going for them right now. "I’m breathing in the chemicals" followed by a deep breath alludes to either the stadium again, or it refers to the recruiting process Art Briles has going on currently in building his team for the years to come. You don’t become superhuman without becoming exposed to some type of chemicals, and super humans are often referred to as freaks. Our "freak team" we have in Waco certainly makes these lyrics hold true. The deep breath is a sense to get ready for all that is about to be in Baylor football.

I'm breaking in, shaping up, then checking out on the prison bus

This is it, the apocalypse

Whoa

The first line of these lyrics is the unveiling of Baylor’s new uniforms. National outlets don’t tend to cover Baylor sports that often, if at all, so in order to get coverage they have to do something so fantastic that it draws attention to them. With the unveiling of those awesome uniforms (awesome is sometimes overused, but I don’t mean it as in ‘really cool’ I mean it as in the dictionary.com definition of "inspiring an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, or fear; causing or inducing awe") the next part about checking out on the prison bus is difficult to find a similarity for, but, as far prison goes, the Bears have been locked away in the bottom of the Big 12 Conference standings up until fairly recently, but with their recent success, recruiting, uniforms, and new stadium, people are no longer picking the Bears to be in last place anymore. They are "checking out" of their stay in the prison that is the bottom of the conference. Not many people, nationally, not us ODB’ers, thought Baylor could do anything on the football field. I, like many of you, had a very strong feeling Baylor would beat Kansas State last year, and this only a year after Baylor had a Hesiman winner. Some people are even picking Baylor to be a dark horse to win the Big 12 this year. If you were to have said this to the same people just a few years ago they would have said. You know what, that would be the apocalypse. And now it’s happening, whoa.

This then builds up to the chorus

I'm waking up, I feel it in my bones

Enough to make my systems blow

Welcome to the new age, to the new age

Welcome to the new age, to the new age

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm radioactive, radioactive

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm radioactive, radioactive

The chorus is the most powerful part of the song. I see it as what the season can be for the Baylor Bears this upcoming fall. I wake up and feel that this season will be truly special for Baylor. Hopefully, it will be enough to blow up the BCS system a year before the playoff system is implemented. The next two lines are pretty self-explanatory. This aint your daddy’s Baylor Bears football team no more. This is the new age of Baylor football and the future for this team is the present. All the whoa’s followed by radioactive describes the Baylor offense. Explosive I think is too soft of a word to describe the offense. It has officially gone from explosive, to nuclear. The system not only breeds a unit that places near the top year after year in basically every offensive statistical category, but also breeds freaks, as has been stated earlier. It is a system that those who love offense are in awe of, and those who make their money on coaching defense are scared to death of.

The last two verses that are in-between the chorus is as follows:

I raise my flags, dye my clothes

It's a revolution, I suppose

We're painted red to fit right in

Whoa

Followed by this a little later

All systems go, the sun hasn't died

Deep in my bones, straight from inside

The first set of lyrics gives me an image of this team going to battle. We raise the BU flags and break out the new duds to start turning heads this year and build off of the success we had the last couple months of the 2012 season. This team is overtaking the common conception of what Baylor football was to start anew what this team can be. The only line I don’t agree with in the entire song relating to the Baylor football team is "We’re painted red to fit right in". This team does not fit in to a common mold that breeds its success. This team is very different and I love it.

The last part says that this team’s success isn’t just a one-time thing. The sun has not set on this team’s abilities to maintain and continue their success. One of the biggest reasons why this is is because every single player believes in themselves, and this team. Deep in their bones, straight from their guts, they believe they can go on to great things. Whether it be winning the Heisman trophy and bringing it back to Waco for the second time in three years, or winning the Big 12 and even further, this team believes, and I love it.

I can’t wait for football season.

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