Having grown up around Fayetteville, Arkansas, I am naturally a Razorback fan, which means I have called the hogs many times in my life, have in triumph or desperation performed that ritual whooping cheer fans use to rally a University of Arkansas team, have raised both hands and, wiggling outstretched fingers, joined thousands and thousands in a mass “Whoo-Pig, Sooiiieee!”

Arkansans will break out the hog-call at any Razorback football or basketball game, but it can be heard in unlikely venues worldwide, anywhere more than three Hog fans start carousing together. Like several other Southern traditions, from the outside it looks foolish and perhaps a bit frightening, but is actually pretty complex when you break it down.

The hog-call once had a practical use in the older, more agricultural south; anybody with pigs had their own distinctive calls meant to summon their herds. My mother, raised in the Appalachians, once recited several actual calls she remembered from her childhood, a startling noise not meant to be heard indoors. These days, in addition to its use as a stadium cheer, the hog-call works as a kind of pledge of allegiance or loyalty test: for some fans, a newly-hired Razorback coach who doesn’t call the hogs with enthusiasm at his first press conference starts his tenure here with cloud of suspicion above him. In contrast, the coach who leads the cheer will be generally well regarded, all things being equal—until he starts losing.

It is an unfair and ill-founded reason to dislike a man, but a large part of being Southern is believing your ways are common sense and everybody elses’ damn foolishness, so sometimes those of us raised calling the hogs have trouble remembering it can be a humiliating thing to ask a grown man to do.

I won’t pretend all my hog-calls have been without self-consciousness; and sometimes, like standing ovations after mediocre theater, they have been forced and insincere. But when the team is losing 21-zip and the players’ heads are down, or when we’ve just witnessed some grand, unbelievable on-field heroism there is nothing like the feeling of calling the hogs, all of us calling on our hogs—and having it work. We call out, and the sound rattles the opposition like a banshee war cry, gives fatigued, spirit-broken defensive backs the courage to face another down. It harnesses all our fears, hopes, gratitude, worship, pride—it gives us fans a way to feel connected, like we’re helping.