Plebes, those in their first year at the Academy pray fervently for their team to win....as the "hazing" of Plebes by Upper Classmen is relaxed post winning. Not so for the Losers.
That's what I was referring to.
In 1990, the Los Angeles Times reported:
The new class of cadets at the U.S. Military Academy this year has been spared a disciplinary ritual as old as West Point itself.
Hazing of first-year cadets, or plebes, has been abolished.
But at this 188-year-old school, hazing is a tradition that has survived reform before.
Plebes of old had to do such things as memorize how many ice cubes go in the drinks of upperclassmen. Or double-time around the barracks at 120 steps a minute, squaring corners like robots. Or study New York Times articles, ready to repeat them verbatim at the whim of older cadets.