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Cardboard Club

Cardboard Club

In 1948 home football games got a lot more colorful when cheerleader Norm Sper founded the Cardboard Club. The club made creative displays out of squares of painted cardboard that students held up during football games to make composite pictures. Requiring careful organization and coordination, the sometimes elaborate displays were a highlight of football games in the 1950s and 1960s. The displays contained pictures and sayings, the most popular of which was "GO TO HELL STATE." By the late 1960s there were frequent threats to suspend the card stunts when some students started throwing their cards. Faculty in particular complained of this as their seats were below the student section. The card stunts returned in the early 1980s, aided by students who employed computers to design the patterns, but were canceled after a few years when students started throwing cards again.


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