The University of Alabama has been playing organized football since Everything changed in , though. There is a problem, however, with that story. The nickname stuck. You have to fast-forward 23 years to come upon the first mention of elephants to describe Alabama football.
Like the team's nickname, it was the brainchild of a sports writer. More from LostLettermen. Strupper and other writers referred to the linemen on that team — which won the third of Alabama's 14 claimed national championships — as "Red Elephants.
But it would be nearly five decades until Alabama recognized the animal as its official mascot. Which isn't to say that elephants didn't factor in prominently to gameday tradition. Auburn's "War Eagle" ]. During the s, the school kept a live elephant mascot named "Alamite. By the s, keeping a live elephant year round proved to be too expensive for the university. Instead, the school's "Spirit Planning Committee" started hiring elephants — often from traveling circuses passing through or by Tuscaloosa — for every homecoming.
And in the early s, Alabama student Melford Espey went the extra mile and dressed up as the animal to cheer on his beloved team. It was clear that Crimson Tide Nation's obsession with the pachyderm would not cease. So what took so long for the Alabama administration to adopt the animal as the school's official mascot? That was not the image of his players he wanted to portray. Alabama Football coach Nick Saban has always devoted many of his lessons for players to one small area of their anatomy.
That small area resides between the ears. The ability to shape thinking and teach how to translate thinking into action has made Saban, not only a great coach but also a great leader of young men. The season has been one when player development and improving physical and mental skills have had a slow learning curve.
Saban, at least publicly, has been somewhat patient as players gradually improve. Three regular-season Saturdays are all that is left. One, maybe two of the remaining games may offer a stiff challenge. Alabama Football will be favored in each of those games and should finish the regular season at Next would be a contest being talked about across college football.
How far is the Crimson Tide from being elite? It is true, taking the game as a whole, that Alabama covered more ground during the scrimmage. Alabama had a greater diversity of formations and kept the point of combat in opposing territory. Prior to the adoption of the nickname of "Crimson Tide," newspaper accounts from the early s called Alabama simply the "Alabama football team," "Crimson," "Crimson and White," or "the Alabama football eleven," with "eleven" being a common refrain a century ago in reference to the number of players on the field for each team.
Alabama's first nickname was the "Thin Red Line," another war reference which was used to describe Alabama teams, according to Alabama's website. The following graph shows the popularity of the term "Alabama Crimson Tide," according to the newspapers. The following paragraph comes from a game recap after Alabama's win over Clemson in October , when Alabama scored the game's only points on a yard field goal.
Watson, the Bryant Museum curator, said before the "thin red line," Alabama's informal nickname used to be the cadets because the university was a military school "and then newspapers, they called them the warriors," he said.
The only thing I've ever seen is in the '20s, that's when the university kind of started using it if they were putting something out, they would use Crimson Tide and I've been trying to find — and I haven't found it — the first use of 'Roll Tide.
Using the database of newspapers. Most of the early newspaper references to the Crimson Tide referred to the nickname as "Alabama's" Crimson Tide, often with "Crimson Tide" in parentheses or at least one of "crimson" or "tide" spelled in lowercase.
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