Colors may change; fans don't

By Charlie Barnes
Executive director, Seminole Boosters

In 1889, the captains of five Ivy League teams agreed to limit swearing and punching during football games. Thus removed from the field, such behavior gravitated up into the stands, where it has found happy occupation ever since. Fans are fanatical, especially when it comes to the cherished colors and noble symbols of their college teams.

Take Florida State and Florida, for instance. Ah, the crisp, sweet scents of autumn in north Florida. The clamor and enthusiasm of the partisans decked out in school colors.

The Battling Blue and White vs. the Fighting Purple and Gold?

Well, yes, actually. When the two schools met for the first time under those names - the University of Florida and Florida State College (It wasn't until 1905 that it became Florida Female College, and FSCW was born in 1909)- Florida State emerged with a 12-0 victory to cap the 1903 season. The pre-Gators were known simply as "The Blue and White." Our Florida State team had no name at all, but its purple and gold colors were prominent.

The blue-and-white clad Florida team had been known as the "Cadets" in 1901. In '06 and '07, they endured the tag of "Pee Wee's Boys," a reference to player-coach Pee Wee Forsythe.

But in 1908, a Gainesville souvenir shop owner changed everything after he visited his son at the University of Virginia, and called on a Charlottesville company that manufactured college pennants. He thought an alligator would be the appropriate symbol for a Florida school, but no one in Virginia knew what one looked like. The venerable University of Virginia library was consulted, and a plate made for the production of large alligator banners - in Virginia's orange and blue colors, of course.

In Gainesville, fans loved the alligator symbol, colors and all, and the Gators came into being.

Two other colleges have the gator name, but Florida's claim is the oldest and most legitimate. Allegheny College athletic teams became the Gators in 1925, not because there are any alligators anywhere near Meadville, Pa., but because the students liked the alliterative value of Allegheny Alligators. And the San Francisco State Gators? Well, they used to be the Golden Gaters, then just Gaters, and finally Gators. It just takes too long to explain that your school symbol is named for a bridge.

The University of Miami's first football season in 1926 was marked by a devastating hurricane that postponed the first game and gave the team a name.

The Golden Hurricane (singular) of Tulsa is the only other weather mass adopted as a symbol. Tulsa chose "Golden Tornado" in 1922, but Georgia Tech was going by that name at the time, so Tulsa shifted to the next closest choice.

In popular lore, FSU students voted for the Seminoles name in the fall of 1947, choosing from a list: Golden Falcons, Statesmen, Crackers, Senators, Indians and Seminoles.

That's the more-or-less official line, but it's not true. Students, contrary souls that they are, decided at the eleventh hour to ditch the work of the "Nickname Selection Committee," a group of three faculty and four students who had selected the six final choices from among thousands submitted.

According to Cale Conley's book, Sunshine Hate, it was "a classic example of campus politics." The original list of six - the list you have seen so often printed in official histories - was not voted on. Instead of voting on the committee's list, a preliminary election was held, and the students came up with their own list of five. They were: the Tarpons, The Fighting Warriors, Seminoles, Crackers, and Statesmen.

On Nov. 7, the vote was taken, and Seminoles won by 110 votes over Statesmen.

The old purple and gold of Florida State College evolved into the garnet and gold of FSCW. In fact, the haunting Hymn to the Garnet & Gold is an FSCW melody.

Florida State College triumphed in its first football game, a 1902 contest against South Georgia Military Institute. And the intentions of the Ivy League captains notwithstanding, the celebration echoed frenzies yet to come.

This, according to the 1902 school yearbook, The Argo : "Great was the rejoicing. Until the wee small hours the woods rang with her victorious songs, and staid old people, awakened from placid dreams by the wailing of 'Boola,' were glad, no doubt, that football comes but once a year."

No doubt.