Every fall the stands of the Auburn University football stadium are filed with the sounds of the Auburn University Marching Band (AUMB). Do you think all the band has been doing this fall is preparing for each game and playing at those games? If you did don’t feel bad, but you are wrong. This 2008 fall season, the AUMB has been hand-selected to participate in a contest sponsored by ESPN and Paramount Pictures. Yes, Auburn University was selected to participate with other bands hand-selected by ESPN and Paramount pictures. Pretty interesting to know that fact about AUMB isn’t it?

Want to know about the contest now? Well, the name of the contest is called the Battle of the Bands and the Quest for the Crystal. The contest is named after a based upon the newest Indiana Jones film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The bands in the competition include the Auburn University Marching Band, Clemson University Tiger Band, University of Georgia Redcoat Band, University of Florida Gator Band, LSU Tiger Marching Band, USC Trojan Marching Band and the University of Texas Longhorn Band. Each band was required to perform the theme song to Indiana Jones and a film crew from Paramount Pictures came out to each school to create a video of the theme song performance. These videos were then posted to the contests home page located within ESPN’s own Web site.

Anyone could log onto the site and cast their vote, but participating voters could only vote one time per day of the contest. After the videos were posted to the Web site, it was up to the members of the Auburn University Marching Band to generate enough hype about the contest so they could win the crystal trophy and the $25,000 dollars donated to their school’s band.

The Auburn University Marching Band was determined to not go down without a fight. They created a Facebook group and began inviting everyone they knew and asked those people to invite their friends as well. Then they began immediately sending out messages to the group members reminding them to vote and to tell everyone they could to vote as well. AUMB members even took advantage of post-it notes. The yellow sticky notes could be seen all around campus, notifying and urging everyone that saw the notes to vote for Auburn on the contest’s Web site.

The voting for the contest ended this past Friday. The AUMB did not end up winning the contest, but they had a great time trying. Their director, Corey Spurlin, said the band has been doing a great job this year and hopes to continue improving on their best. In the past, the band has won many awards and traveled to many different areas of the world, like last years trip to Ireland.

The band has worked really hard to become what they are now. Spurlin said it was an honor just to be selected to compete in the competition.

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