It is a Kafka-esque experience to find that you have gone from reporting the news to making the news. I found myself in just such a metamorphosis (ha!) last week.

The Double Clutch initiated controversy with last week’s 25 inches. After effusive praise of USC football, the Trojan Band was lambasted and accused of theft for their playing of ‘All Right Now’, which, as any Stanford fan will attest, is “the signature song of the Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band.”

USC’s band was then called “the most annoying gang of troubadours in collegiate sports.”

Needless to say, everyone took the time to make their opinions known. LSJUMB member and former drum majorette Lori Karns dismissed it as envy.

“Their unceasing, mediocre renditions of ARN only confirm the fact that their

undersexed existence can only be mitigated by a pathetic attempt to emulate the success of others . . . Cal may be our rivals, but U$C is the enemy.”

A letter to The Daily deemed it “piracy” and called for the USC band to be barred from Stanford Stadium.

Those e-mailers who were courteous enough to sign their names (thanks to all one-third of you) were very gracious and polite, took the time to use punctuation, and expressed their opinions in a manner befitting of educated students.

A clarification: I did not mean to imply that USC had rolled out ‘All Right Now’ strictly for the Orange Bowl. Many readers pointed me to the fact that they’ve played the song for a good long while. I simply noted that the alleged pilfering should be all the more offensive given that it was the Pac-10 Conference’s finest moment of the year.

Of course, that begs the question: when did USC start playing the song? One unsigned e-mailer said, and this quote is verbatim, “Dude, SC has been playing ‘All Right Now’ for an f’n century what are you talking about. What are you a 10 year old?”

According to Dr. Wesley Chang, a USC alumnus, the Trojan Marching Band began playing the song in the 1972 season. (In fact, the song itself dates back to only the 1970s, so I guess Mr. Dude needs to adjust his clock by a few decades.)

I had contended, per the LSJUMB Web site, that we had debuted the song at the 1972 Rose Bowl. So, in Chang’s words, “ . . . the Stanford band DID start playing the song before the Trojan Marching Band, but by only ONE game.”

In other words, we played it first, and they stole it.

The most common argument I read said that Stanford itself had stolen the song, or that we do not hold its copyright, or some legalese like that. Well, from what I know, that’s absolutely true. However, we are not alone. For decades, Ohio State’s band has taken The McCoys’ ‘Hang On Sloopy’ as a quasi-official song. And if some other Big Ten band were to strike it up, they’d be pilloried out of the Horseshoe and pelted with fruit.

(I’m not even going to get into the issue of ‘Script Ohio,’ a formation which OSU took from the Michigan Marching Band, who themselves originated the on-field band.)

I suppose the Trojans get away with their gig because everyone is afraid they’ll launch yet another rendition of that ‘Tribute to Troy’ cadence.

On one serious note, I am very surprised the Pac-10 allows the Trojan Band to go into other schools’ stadiums and turn them into a Tribute to Troy jukebox for four hours.

Part of home-field advantage should be the right to keep the opposing team’s band from taking over the airspace.

Then again, the conference lets the LSJUMB do all the things that make them great, pushing (past) the boundaries of decorum and good taste.

All the cross-college banter reminded me of a story I once heard. A Stanford student found himself seated between a Cal student and a USC student on a plane. The Cal student said, “I’m going to get a Coke.”

The Stanford student graciously offered to retrieve it, and while he was gone, the Cal student spit in his shoe. When he returned, the USC student said he would also like a Coke. Again, while he was gone, the man spit in his shoe.

Upon returning, the Stanford student said, “Why must we always be divided by the colors we wear? When are all of these petty games going to stop? All the spitting in shoes and peeing in Cokes?”

The moral of the story is: Always get your own drink.

Christopher Anderson is a first-year graduate student in electrical engineering. E-mail him at cpanders@stanford.edu