In 1904, Sprague, then a senior and the school's band leader, was preparing for a concert to be held at the University.
He handed part of Opie to his roommate, Lincoln Colcord, and asked him to provide some Maine-themed lyrics for the song.
However, Sprague had a chance meeting with University of Maine President George Emory Fellows, who told him that the lyrics were all right.
[3] In 1929, the National Broadcasting Company acquired the rights to Opie and Vallée, the host of the network's Fleischmann's Yeast Hour, recorded the song with a faster tempo and a few word changes.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the song came under moralist fire again for its promotion of drinking and lyrics that were considered ‘sexist’ ("let every Maine man sing" and "to the lips and the eyes of the girls who will love us someday").