The football team’s entrance onto the field at Carter-Finley Stadium is filled with fireworks, cheers, a big-screen video and, most importantly, a loud, driving intro song to which the team runs onto the field.

This year, the athletics department decided to involve fans in the selection of that song. Since June 25, fans have been able to vote for their choice of intro song through GoPack.com. Voting will end Friday at 5 p.m.

Chris Alston, the athletics department’s associate director of marketing, said this is the first time the school has allowed fans to vote.

“Every year I get a couple dozen phone calls expressing opinions about what the intro song should be,” Alston said. “It’s always a hot topic among fans and on message boards. We have a wide variety of fans, so we put it to a vote to see what they think we should use for the song.”

Alston said as of Wednesday morning, he’s received more than 2,500 votes, which he called a “pretty good turnout.”

Alston said there have been 75 to 100 different songs submitted ranging between one and a couple hundred votes each. While he would not disclose the song in the lead, he did say it has received between 500 and 600 votes, or approximately 20 percent of the total number of votes.

Mike Hershkowitz, a senior in nuclear engineering, said the voting program is a good idea as long as proper measures are taken to make sure an appropriate song is chosen.

“As long as they use common sense when looking at the results, it’s a good idea,” he said. “I have heard of a lot of people from UNC saying they were going to vote for ‘It’s Raining Men.’ Votes like these should be thrown out immediately.”

Alston said he has seen some joke entries, especially from the bc.edu e-mail addresses.

“A bunch of Boston College fans got together and collaborated to vote for the same song,” he said.

While Alston did not want to mention which song the Eagle fans were voting for, he said Wolfpack fans need not worry that a joke entry will win.

“We want to have the best song possible for all N.C. State fans,” he said. “You can pretty much tell which songs are serious votes and which are not. Anytime something like this is Internet-based, there are going to be entries like that. We knew there were going to be some joke entries.”

Alston said there have been great reactions for songs that were used in the past.

“We’ve gotten a lot of votes for P.O.D.’s ‘Boom’ and Drowning Pool’s ‘Bodies,'” Alston said.

Hershkowitz said he’s liked some of the songs used in the past, but he voted for a different song this year: Metallica’s “Human,” off the S&M album.

“I loved ‘Boom’ from a few years back,” he said. “It was a great choice that got everyone in the stadium (except the visitors) going crazy. Especially the ‘here come the boys from the South’ part. Last year’s song did not quite match the intensity of ‘Boom’ or match up with the pre-game videos as well.”

Alston said AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” and “Hell’s Bells” have been strong vote-getters, too. Some older songs have been popular, like Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf.”

Several other Metallica songs also received votes, including “Of Wolf and Man.”

“Quite a few students are coming through with more modern hip-hop songs, like ‘Big Things Poppin’,’ by T.I.,” Alston said.

Alston said the winner of the vote will be a closely-guarded secret, only to be revealed at the season-opening game against Central Florida on Sept. 1.

“It’s going to be a surprise for the first game,” he said. “That’s a policy we’ve had for years. People would always call and ask what the song was going to be, and we’d always tell them to wait until the first game. It’s a nice surprise, and it’ll be a secret until then.”

Alston said there hasn’t been any discussion yet about whether or not to use a vote again next season. He said it will depend on if Athletics decides to use the same song every year or not.

“A lot of people have said they want the same song every year to be a kind of tradition,” Alston said. “Others have said they want to keep it fresh and have a new song every year. Once we start planning for next season, we’ll evaluate and see if this is something we’ll do again.”