The band will strike up those familiar notes inside Mackey Arena. And the fury will start to boil in the hearts of these fans — all in black and gold, ornery looks on their faces.

They will raise their arms into the air and wiggle their fingers up high. Then, they will start jumping up and down. This tune, "Hail Fire," is their battle song. They mean what they are about to say.

They will lean down and rise up. Again and again.

And then those words, their fighting words, come out in a raucous, roar: “IU SUCKS.”

Under the lights at Ross-Ade Stadium this Saturday — when Purdue takes on SEC rival Missouri — the Boilermaker fans’ chants won’t mention the Mizzou Tigers tackling their team on the field.

Instead, after every kick off — theirs or Missouri's — during media timeouts, the “IU sucks” chant will commence.

At basketball games, it happens with the band. At football games, it’s more a cappella. Sometimes, it’s the entire fan choir in sync. Sometimes, it’s a few outliers chanting.

One thing is steadfast: Purdue fans shout “IU sucks” at every home game, no matter the opponent.

The ritual is quirky, to say the least.

Critics call it tacky and a sign of an inferiority complex. Supporters call it a beloved tradition.

“I think it is fair to say there has been an ongoing debate about whether it is good, bad or neutral,” said Tom Schott, Purdue’s senior associate athletic director. “It is not athletics department-driven.”

And that, right there, is a key statement. This chant is the fans' chant. Not the university’s.

After all, there has been some controversy surrounding the “IU sucks” rallying call.

The athletics department tried to shut it down once. But rowdy fans won out.

***

No one, it seems, knows the exact origins of the chant.

Schott said he is unaware of its history. Elliot Bloom, Purdue’s director of basketball operations, isn’t sure, either.

“I don’t know if there was a moment or a game when it was just decided, let’s do this,” he said. “It’s probably every bit of 10 or 12 years ago it began.”

Student members of The Paint Crew — the men’s basketball cheering section — said they are under the impression that some variety of the chant has been going on for years. Perhaps an even raunchier one, like "(expletive) IU".

Andrew Ledman, former vice-president of The Paint Crew, said today's iteration of the "IU sucks" chant at the end of the song "Hail Fire," originated in 2008. Before that, for years, fans had been chanting "IU sucks" during another song the band played -- multiple times. That prompted complaints from Purdue officials, thus the switch, he said.

But again in November 2012, the athletics department at Purdue made an official request to fans to do away with the chant during "Hail Fire."

Board members said at the time they had been receiving complaints from alumni. New restrictions were set. "Hail Fire" could be played inside Mackey. The band no longer plays it at Ross-Ade.

Some agreed banning the chant would be the right move, including Purdue supporter Julie Stewart who said "a major university with the worldwide reputation Purdue has earned in so many areas should not define its sportsmanship with cheap, alcohol-driven snark. This kind of behavior should be beneath the student body of any credible institution, but especially one with a legend like Purdue's to defend."

But the majority of fans were in favor of keeping that chant going.

Conner Klotz, a staff reporter for The Exponent, Purdue’s student newspaper, took a different approach in an opinion piece titled “‘IU Sucks,’ But We Should Say It Less.”

“Personally, I don’t believe we should chant ‘IU sucks’ unless we’re actually playing the Hoosiers, but it seems I’m in the minority with that belief,” he wrote.

At the time of his article in 2016, the paper ran a Twitter poll asking: "If Purdue is not playing Indiana, should the fans still chant ‘IU sucks’ during games?” Sixty-three percent responded yes.

Nearly two years later, Klotz said he doesn’t see that chant going away.

“My sense is that it has been around for a very, very long time,” he said. “And that, despite my best efforts in (that column), it will be around for quite a while longer.”

***

Purdue, of course, isn’t the only one with a sports war cry. In fact, its chant is fairly mild.

Take Duke, whose fans shout: “Go to hell Carolina, go to hell” and at the end add, “Eat (expletive).”

IU fans, too, are famous for making fun of their “nerdy, engineering school” opponents. One familiar sign in the stands at IU games reads: “Purdue: Keeping ugly girls out of IU since 1869.” The Hoosiers also yell things, such as, “PU, you stink,” call their opponents the “PUkes” and during their games against Purdue, also chant “Purdue sucks.”

Former Purdue basketball coach Gene Keady says all of the signs and the shouts and even the chants are simply playful banter.

“It’s having fun with your rival,” he said. Keady even added a little something nice about IU.

“Personally, I respect them. They were always tough to beat,” he said. “They made me a better coach.”

Still, the Purdue chant can be a bit confusing to people who don’t know the IU-Purdue rivalry and even to some who do.

“Wait, are Purdue fans yelling “IU sucks” on kickoffs?” Nick Olson of Indianapolis tweeted during Purdue’s Aug. 30 game against Northwestern. “As someone that’s not a fan of either IU or Purdue let me tell you, that’s horrifically embarrassing when you’re losing to Northwestern at home.”

Purdue fan Lauren Warner shot back: “We always yell it and it doesn’t matter who we’re playing because the only thing that ever holds true is that IU sucks.”

Bloom, who graduated from Purdue in 1999 and has been with the university for 18 years, said the chant succinctly sums up the IU-Purdue feud.

“You’re not going to be screaming out poetry” about your biggest rival, he said.

“Our students are very classy. I would put them against any student section in terms of how they treat the opponents,” Bloom said. “They are just a very savvy, smart group and they represent us and the university well.”

Contact sports reporter Dana Benbow via email at dbenbow@indystar.com. Follow her on Twitter @danabenbow.