Last football season, in an attempt to fire-up fans, the Arkansas State Athletics Department hit upon promotion platinum: ask fans to vote on a sing-along song. It’s not a difficult premise to grasp. Rowdy fan bases across sports will sing-along to Seven Nation Army or Jump Around or (sigh) Sweet Caroline like they invented the idea. Why shouldn’t Arkansas State have it’s own diddy?

The marketing and promo department first invited the fan base to submit suggestions, which provided everybody something to do on Twitter. Next somebody spun the bingo cage and came up with four titles to vote for: Friends in Low Places (Garth Brooks), Baby I’m Howlin For You (Black Keys), Hungry Like the Wolf (Duran Duran) and Ring of Fire (Johnny Cash).

Each candidate had its advantages – and weaknesses. For example, Friends in Low Places is clearly the most fun song to sing of the four, yet doesn’t have much connective tissue to the Red Wolves. Baby I’m Howlin For You has that catchy Na Na NaNa NA sequence, bit it also seemed a little played out. Hungry Like the Wolf brought the energy and menace (“I’m on the hunt down after you”), but Hungry isn’t much of a sing-along.

That left Ring of Fire, a song with cultural connection thanks to A-State’s affiliation with the Johnny Cash Boyhood Home Museum. It helps that Johnny Cash bridges the divide between country and rock, with Ring of Fire bearing the grit and sorrow of classic country and grunge.

But whenever the Centennial Bank DJ queued up Ring of Fire, it fizzled and died on mumbling lips. Fans seemed confused by its presence. Some sections of the stadium picked it up, but most weren’t in the sing-along mood. Why?

Getting Fans Involved In The Voting Process Was a Mistake

America is a democracy. Football isn’t. Getting the fans involved only created camps devoted to their own choice. The Friends in Low Places Camp was pretty damn set on Friends in Low Places. Ask a member of the Baby I’m Howlin For You Camp what they thought about the vote, and they’ll bore you with bitterness.

“Letting fans vote on anything is stupid,” said my brother, Rex Steele. “You hire people to be the voice of the fans and trust their judgment.” Exactly. Take lead. Make the decision, accept the lumps, and push it hard without a second’s thought.

It Was Just Awful, Terrible, No Good Timing

By the time the Red Wolves unveiled Ring of Fire as the new sing-along song, Arkansas State was 1-3 and coming off two gut-punching fourth-quarter losses to Memphis and Old Dominion. Fans weren’t exactly in the mood to warm up the old pipes for anything other than groans of dismay and perhaps a sprinkling of boos. Winning is for singing. Losing is for snoozing.

Maybe Ring of Fire Just Wasn’t the Right Choice?

Johnny Cash had a bit of a revival back in the 1990s with a sorrowful cover of Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt. Cash had kind of an “old man emo” thing about him that appealed to the Citizens of Generation X (such as myself). Perhaps the majority of fans just don’t have that Cash Connexion. Let’s face it, there is a dour grunginess to Ring of Fire missing from Friends and Howln, which conjure good times instead of, I dunno, mortality, morality and damnation.

Jonesboro Just Don’t Sing

Some have suggested that Jonesboro is comprised of reserved individuals too self-conscious to belt out any song, let alone a Johnny Cash classic. Too many social teetotalers, cell phone zombies and casual fans. Some sections of Centennial Bank Stadium are definitely more upbeat than others. Other sections never seem to know when to stand, when to chant, when to erupt and when to gnash their teeth. TV timeouts creating an inconsistent flow of the game presents one problem, but also, five years of mediocre-to-bad football have made the fanbase surly.

Can Ring of Fire Be Saved?

“Quit trying to make fetch happen,” is not just a line from Mean Girls, but also sound advice. Stop forcing the fan participation aspect of Ring of Fire. Instead, just let it happen. Play the song at a consistent time: at the the start of the fourth quarter. Make a production out of it – a video on the big screen, perhaps Howl leaping through a literal ring of fire, or Howl wearing the Johnny Cash black trench coat. Choreograph a new number for the cheer team. For god’s sake, get the band involved.

But don’t insist that the fans sing. You can’t make fans – especially Red Wolves fans – do anything. If the fans like it, if the fans are in the mood, they’ll sing. You can bribe the student section to get it started, sure, but let the fans figure it out on their own.

And then maybe, just maybe, we’ll see The Ring of Fire.