This paper examines the component parts, and functions, of the “hype-video” in sports. Special attention is paid to the aesthetic freedoms deployed to 1) give new definition to otherwise anonymous, color-coordinated crowds, and 2) to adjust this mediated image of “Spirit Nation” at will. A comparison of “hype-videos” for Detroit-area teams and New Orleans teams framed by several years of fieldwork reveals contrasting civic recovery narratives, reframing team affiliation as a mutable form of cultural identity.The esteemed jazz trumpeter and New Orleans Native Wynton Marsalis is no stranger to the New Orleans musical tribute. Indeed, without any further prompting, one might imagine the following is a clip from a jazz documentary—a colorful celebration of the widely recognized birthplace of the music with which he is associated:This is not a clip from a jazz documentary though. The true inspiration for this particular performance was the so-called “Who Dat” Nation.More specifically, Marsalis produced this “Hype Video” of sorts as a fan of the New Orleans Saints Football team—a legion of devoted followers preparing for the team’s first ever Super Bowl Appearance in 2009.I begin with this example because of the ways in which the depicted “Who Dat” populace bucks the snapshots of otherwise color-coordinated crowds that stand in stark contrast to the highly produced coverage of televised sports.While appearing in the kind of personalized attire that befits an era of social media echo chambers and highly curated or curatable digital content, the fans are also presented with clear values. The declared virtues of the New Orleans Saints fan are not those of clear “winners” (or losers). On the contrary, the outcomes of gameplay by an assembly of athletes that are not always even from the city they play for are made into an integrated part of everyday life in New Orleans. In this specific case, the strength and fortitude it takes to live in a place prone to natural disasters is equated with what it takes to “Be With The Saints (Even When You Ain’t).”Drawing equally on the otherwise obscure moments in Saints Football history and other more widely known aspects of the local character of New Orleans, Marsalis makes public a type of fandom that is much more commonly experienced on an individual level. Although the iconography of familiar landmarks and other such New Orleans symbols makes the narrative legible to the unindoctrinated, the story arc is punctuated by shared experiences not accessible to all. The recitation of team-defining plays is not new to definitions of fan loyalty in the world of football, but the flexibility Marsalis flexes in this audiovisual media is a defining feature of more modern renditions. Specifically, knowledge you once acquired as a game attendee, or devoted sports section reader; and, or inherited from other fans, can now be passively consumed. In this case, Marsalis’s tribute was incorporated into a CBS Special for the 2013 Super Bowl, and distributed to Marsalis’s fans (football connoisseurs or no) via his artist website and his social media channels.In this, Marsalis’s “Spirit of New Orleans” is a musical exception that proves the rule, essentially situating a single championship game in a single season in the overlapping histories of the team and the visible community that supports it.This is what makes the “Hype Video” a significant development in the history of football fandom. To use the terminology of political scientist and historian Benedict Anderson, the use and spread of such “vernaculars” as “instruments of administrative centralization” (i.e., the large-scale circulation of such narratives as digital media), contribute directly to the rise of the national consciousness of the “Spirit Nation” (the Saints Nation in this case).From this perspective, Marsalis is not the original architect of the Saints Nation narrative he offers; he highlights the increasingly high stakes of the community identity he represents. What once was an organic outgrowth of in-person assemblies of fans is now a full-scale mediated production that can involve fans in a variety of in-person and web-based formats.I start with the example of Marsalis and his “Spirit of New Orleans”—despite the somewhat unconventional soundtrack—because of the ways in which it calls attention to the amount of meaning making the “Hype Video” facilitates. As a purveyor of the all-important “national” or team narrative, the “Hype Video” is designed as an elaborate synthesis of both localized community identities and the details of team branding—the structure of which cannot impede the mixture of adrenaline and emotion the experience of watching is supposed to elicit.With this in mind, even those “Hype Videos” that aren’t made by musicians are inherently musical—matching high production values to an equally elaborate take on the unique “drive to win” that is associated with the target audience.To best illuminate the musicality of this evolving type of musical media, it is important to first establish the broad outlines of use. At the college level, “Hype Videos” both re-establish the community identity of the associated fanbase at the start of each season, and maintain fan energy or interest throughout. As mentioned previously, the details of such campaigns can be as robust and adaptable as the social media networks that keep the collegiate fans engaged (as well as alumni and other more distant members of the “Spirit Nation” in question) are reliable. This mode of dissemination puts considerable pressure on the engineered media as well, in that sharing “Hype Videos” is both the primary means for promoting off-season events AND the equivalent of a digital pep rally. To accomplish the former, the underlying narrative has to be accessible to fans with varying degrees of “community investment.” To accomplish the latter, the media itself has to resonate with the identity of the associated fan community AND elicit enough energy and emotion to become a way of sharing the experience of following the team in question.The following is an example of a “Hype Video” for an individual University of Michigan football game. In fact, for those who are fans of either team—Michigan or Ohio State, it is The Game.Even in this abbreviated form, the structure of the video itself is typical of the emerging “Hype Video” genre. The definition of a localized “drive to win” is the focal point—manufacturing an opportunity to reaffirm the larger “national” or community narrative that keeps fans of Michigan football engaged.The audible underscoring is also typical of the “Hype Video,” but potentially surprising in other ways. When not selected for public recognition or appeal, musical cues are often orchestrated with a minimal combination of percussion and electric distortion. Undifferentiated percussion easily mimics the live, or metaphoric, clash of helmets, pads, and bodies that sound the visions of war evoked by the super-imposed narrative, while undifferentiated electric guitar or bass lines channel the masculine energy of the “Arena” without introducing the specter of a “Rock God” that would steal focus from the upcoming game. From this perspective, the space left in the audio field is essential. Neither the underscoring nor the elements of Game Day Sound and evocative images and slogans that fill in many, but not all, of the gaps are “complete,” or tell the whole story. As such, the video is both a well-designed commercial and a snippet of recorded memory. New fans of the Wolverines will recognize their favorite athletes, as captured earlier in the season on the field, as well as begin to recognize the scenes from the longer history of the team—the significance of which keeps older fans tuning in year after year. In other words, this is not a premature declaration of victory. It is a fundamentally musical rendering of the “vernacular” of this game, as it relates to the outcomes of a Michigan football season, ensuring that any and all fans feel the anticipation of The Game from the time the video drops to the must-not-miss kick-off on Game Day.The impact of these one-off “Hype Videos” is amplified by the Season “Hype Video.” As something that also sets the stage for the “in-person” game experience, it speaks to both the “Arena Tourist” and the assembled fans in equal measure—acting as an opportunity to present the “Spirt Nation’s” narrative in full.Recreating elements of the locally embedded narrative Marsalis relayed for Saints fans, Michigan alumnus James Earl Jones paints a picture of Michigan football that is both reflective of the university’s sales pitch AND the “Michigan Man” concept that looms large in the legend of the so-called “Winningest Team in College Football.”The people that “believe in Football” in the ways Jones delineates aren’t just anyone—they are Midwesterners whose larger values off the field inform the “work” of the University of Michigan football players on the field. Although the asserted relationship between football and community does not apply equally to all in the Ann Arbor area (let alone the larger world across which University of Michigan alums are dispersed), the added backstory provided by media like this about what it means to be a “Wolverine” established the basis of a robust team narrative that, for a New Yorker like myself, can ease entrance into the larger regional community the football team is made to represent.In unpacking the structure of “Hype Videos,” I have underscored the similarities that exist across examples produced for football teams at the college and professional levels. The case study I will now conclude my talk with highlights one additional key difference, which is to say that “Hype Videos” for professional football teams can further reflect the extremes of community and corporate stakes in the sport.For the sake of time, I will limit this discussion to a broad outline of the findings we can discuss more in the conference session.First, side-by-side viewing of New Orleans and Detroit videos spotlight the different economies that support each city (and their resident football teams by extension). Where, in other words, the New Orleans tourists seek out is given a prominent place in the New Orleans landscape against which the Saints story is told, the Detroit landscape against which the Lions story is told strikes a more ominous tone.This observation dovetails with the next significant finding, which is to say that the more detailed presentations, or performances, of individual “Spirit Nation” identities can become oppositional when paired outside of Game Day match-ups. The catastrophic impact of the automotive industry crisis on Detroit, for example, has not elicited the same national sympathy rebuilding after hurricanes typically does, which ultimately makes the city an obstacle in the Lions story (in ways it isn’t in the New Orleans story).The specifics of this leads me to the final finding I will introduce in this video, which is that the differences between these campaigns point us back towards the details of civic recovery narratives that still frame the experience of living and working in these cities—even years after the precipitating man-made and natural disasters occurred. Where the Saints story is tied to the appearance of resilience (and the notion that the city is still there to be enjoyed by tourists), the Detroit story is more overtly combative—frequently absorbing the local “vernacular” of the Detroit vs. Everybody clothing line, and the embattled community they endeavor to represent. As a prime example of this, we can talk in more depth about the “One Detroit One Pride” campaign, which explicitly tied support of the Detroit Lions to a renewed sense of civic pride.In sum, the elaborate audiovisual synthesis of local media and national team branding the “hype-video” now represents is increasingly fitted with deeply felt, potentially divisive character traits that reflect a growing responsiveness of sports fandom to the increasingly polarized facets of American nationhood. Indeed, as framed by the “Hype-Video,” a win, winning season, and/or, championship victory takes on the stakes, and specificity, of place-based “American Dreams.”