Short article in the DMR about the lost (stolen?) cannon from the Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity in 1972 ish? which was used at home football games and found while dredging Lake Laverne.....anyone know the whole story behind this? It sounds like it was replaced in about 1980?? About the time we were bad for 15 +/- years... anyone have more details about this??
Found cannon in Lake Laverne
- Thread starter 4evertrue
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Don' know much more than the discussion earlier here by Sir aauummm:
https://cyclonefanatic.com/forum/threads/lake-laverne-update.298469/page-5
Alum of the fraternity here. This is an article from the Daily a few years back that tells a pretty good story about the cannon:
A tradition with a bang: the stories behind Alpha Sigma Phi touchdown cannon
Go to an Iowa State football game and wait for the Cyclones to score. When they do, listen for a booming sound and look for a haze of smoke in the south end zone. When it clears, you’ll see a cannon and a group of fraternity brothers standing beside it, waiting for the next touchdown...
iowastatedaily.com
Isn’t the cannon done? I don’t think it’s been used in a couple years.
It was lost. Apparently the guys were rolling it back to storage and it got away from them on the Lincoln Way Hill, and disappeared at high speed into the night.
Unfortunately so. The police department had been trying to make us stop using it for years now and wanted us to take out a huge insurance policy on it, which we could not afford. The athletics department wanted to take over the operation of it, and we told them no since it was our thing. On top of that, around the same time all of these negotiations were going on, a now former member, who was a student at the time and not on cannon crew for this game, got a hold of a field pass after a game and used it to get into football operations areas and was caught. That pretty much ended the athletic department's trust in the undergrads operating it.
I had the chance to talk to Jamie Pollard two years ago about it and proposed allowing fraternity alumni to operate it during games. He told me that he liked the idea but it was not his call on it. That was before I found out about the whole insurance policy thing.
The cannon still exists, I actually helped pick it up from a University PD storage facility last week and it's now stored at another alum's farm. I even got to fire it off again, which is always really fun!
That sounds like a story you tell when you're drunk and think it would be funny to roll the cannon into the lake.
They used to keep it out on the front porch at the West Street unchained and it was stolen one night.
Yep! I honestly had never heard the thoery of it falling off the trailer before as every story has said that it was stolen off the front porch.
I honestly couldn't have seen that happening either as back in the day, usually guys would ride on the trailer with the cannon back to the house from the stadium. Usually firing it off in Lincoln Way traffic as well. If it fell off the trailer, it wouldn't have gone very far after falling off.
It was dumb of someone to steal it because nothing good will come of that. But also as a former college kid myself, I would be disappointed if no one stole an unprotected cannon off of a porch.
So instead of the AD using it, you would prefer for random alums to have it at their place and not be seen/used...?..?..?
I am also an Alpha Sig alum, it was stolen from the porch of Alpha Sigma Phi. At that time, the football games were played at Clyde Williams Stadium, which was literally just down the street from the Alpha Sig house. The cannon was walked from the fraternity to the stadium.
I've learned in the last few days the original creator of the cannon offered to the convert the cannon to a CO2 blast rather than gunpowder.
Correct. It's our cannon, not the athletic department's.
It's being stored at a still very involved alum's property as the university police department won't allow it to be stored at the chapter house anymore and storing it at his place was the only way they'd release it back.
Good to come across another alum! I hadn't heard about the CO2 idea, but it works okay for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with their ship cannons. Still doesn't beat a fully packed 12 gauge shell though
So dumb. Not you, people always trying to figure out how to ruin a good time. Seems like any meaningful tradition we have at Iowa State goes away and they try and invent new traditions which always end up Hokie and dumb. Nothing natural like a bunch of dudes shooting off a cannon after a TD or Field Goal. When I was a ball boy for football they let me shoot it off for the post game one time. As a kid it was really cool. Then in the Marines I got to shoot off the big dogs and it was really really cool. Not as cool as being a kid shooting off a cannon though
I notice OU didn’t get rid of its schooner when they rolled it.
So in about 20-30 years when whoever’s place is at at the time passes away and nobody can remember it ever being used. Some former alum‘s kid is gonna have to figure out or to trash it you’re saying. To each, their own.
Classic case of taking your cannonball and going home.
