Starting half a century ago, some boys from the Good Shepherd School in the Inwood neighborhood of Manhattan had a special cheer for when they attended Columbia University football games up the street.
“Gimme a C!” the mainstream cheer began, going on to spell out the Ivy League institution’s full name. The locals would follow with their own cheer, which began, “Gimme a K!”
“We spelled Columbia with a K,” explained Andre Brown, who grew up nearby and still returns to Columbia’s Upper Manhattan stadium for games, “because the college kids there always thought they were smarter than us.