Wabash’s sports teams are known as the Little Giants. The college competes in men's intercollegiate baseball, basketball, tennis, cross country, golf, football, soccer, swimming & diving, and wrestling. They participate in the NCAA's Division III and the North Coast Athletic Conference, in which they are currently back-to-back-to-back (2005-2007) NCAC football champions. Students may also participate in 23 intramural sports and four club sports. More than three-quarters of Wabash students participate in at least one intramural sport, and over 40 percent of students are varsity athletes. The rallying cheer of Wabash College athletics is "Wabash always fights."
Football at Wabash dates back to 1884, when head coach Edwin R. Taber assembled a team and defeated Butler University by a score of 4-0. The current head football coach is Erik Raeburn, who replaced Chris Creighton after the completion of the 2007 season.
Voted "Indiana's Best College Sports Rivalry" by ESPN viewers in 2005, DePauw University and Wabash College play each November, in the last regular season football game of the year for both teams, for the right to keep or reclaim the Monon Bell. The two teams first met in 1890. In 1932, the Monon Railroad donated its approximately 300-pound locomotive bell to be offered as the prize to the winning team each year. The series is as close as an historic rivalry can be: Wabash leads the all-time series 53-52-9; since the Monon Bell was introduced, DePauw has a 35-34-6 edge. The game routinely sells out (up to 11,000 seats, depending upon the venue and seating arrangement) and has been televised by ABC, ESPN2, and HDNet (where it will appear through 2010). Each year, alumni from both schools gather at more than 50 locations around the United States for telecast parties, and a commemorative DVD (including historic clips known as "Monon Memories") is produced each year. The most recent Monon Bell game, played on November 10, 2007, concluded with a last-second, 47-yard field goal resulting in a DePauw victory.
In 1999, GQ listed the Monon Bell game as reason #3 on its "50 Reasons Why College Football is Better Than Pro Football" list.
“Tradition is a big word at Wabash College,” according to Wabash sophomore Jacque Germain. “We are one of a handful of all-male institutions left. I would not change it for anything in the world. We do 'discriminate' against women by not accepting them into our college; however, that being said, it is NOT because we patronize women or because we do not value women in society. Our college is special and we feel that the all-male atmosphere stimulates a higher educational experience. That might be true and it might not.” Beyond Wabash’s all-male population, traditions also take the form of the following events (to name a few):
Chapel Sing: On the Thursday before Homecoming, freshmen from every living unit on campus compete by singing "Old Wabash" for an extended period of time.
Monon Bell: An annual football game between Wabash and DePauw that’s the basis for their historic gridiron rivalry.
Each fall, Caleb Mills' bell is used to "ring in" the freshman class as students of Wabash College, and each spring the bell "rings out" that year's class of Wabash men as they graduate.
Midnight Munch is a twice-yearly event during which professors and administrators man the lines to serve breakfast foods to weary students in the midst of finals. Traditionally, even the president of the college takes part, serving up “presidential pancakes” to hungry Wallys.
W.A.B.A.S.H. (Wabash Alumni Benefiting and Serving Humanity) Day is a yearly community service day sponsored by the National Association of Wabash Men.
Big Bash at Wabash is the college’s annual reunion weekend. It happens in early June and includes activities for returning Wallys, including a fun run/walk, campus tours, various colloquia, fraternity open houses, receptions, dinners, and an awards brunch.
Along with Hampden-Sydney College, Deep Springs College, and Morehouse College, Wabash is one of only four remaining all-men's liberal arts colleges in the United States.
Wabash College is listed in Loren Pope's Colleges That Change Lives.
Wabash's student radio station, WNDY, loaned its call letters to the fictional Chicago radio station featured in the 1992 Dolly Parton film Straight Talk. Alluding to this, in one scene a studio engineer is seen wearing a Wabash sweatshirt.
The college's name appears on a fraternity's composite portrait in an episode of Comedy Central's Drawn Together. The chapter of the fraternity is Alpha-Alpha, which is the chapter of Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity at Wabash College.
A scene in the sports movie Hoosiers finds the star player's guardian Myra Fleener (Barbara Hershey) telling coach Norman Dale (Gene Hackman) to stay away from Jimmy Chitwood, the player under her care, saying "He's a real special kid, and I have high hopes for him... I think if he works really hard, he can get an academic scholarship to Wabash College and can get out of this place."
