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The Elephant Story

Elephant

The story of how Alabama became associated with the "elephant" goes back to the 1930 season when Coach Wallace Wade had assembled a great football team.

On October 8, 1930, sports writer Everett Strupper of the Atlanta Journal wrote a story of the Alabama-Mississippi game he had witnessed in Tuscaloosa four days earlier. Strupper wrote, "That Alabama team of 1930 is a typical Wade machine, powerful, big, tough, fast, aggressive, well-schooled in fundamentals, and the best blocking team for this early in the season that I have ever seen. When those big brutes hit you I mean you go down and stay down, often for an additional two minutes.

"Coach Wade started his second team that was plenty big and they went right to their knitting scoring a touchdown in the first quarter against one of the best fighting small lines that I have seen. For Ole Miss was truly battling the big boys for every inch of ground.

"At the end of the quarter, the earth started to tremble, there was a distant rumble that continued to grow. Some excited fan in the stands bellowed, 'Hold your horses, the elephants are coming,' and out stamped this Alabama varsity.

"It was the first time that I had seen it and the size of the entire eleven nearly knocked me cold, men that I had seen play last year looking like they had nearly doubled in size."

Strupper and other writers continued to refer to the Alabama linemen as "Red Elephants," the color referring to the crimson jerseys.

The 1930 team posted an overall 10-0 record. It shut out eight opponents and allowed only 13 points all season while scoring 217. The "Red Elephants" rolled over Washington State 24-0 in the Rose Bowl and were declared National Champions. 

 

 

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Those familiar with Auburn University football know the surprising fact that Auburn, in a sense, has two animal mascots. The football team is known as the Auburn Tigers, and yet the University also has a strong connection with the eagle as a school symbol. Fans of the football team yell "war eagle" during kickoffs and a live eagle is released before every football game that is trained to circle the stadium. So where did this eagle fascination originally come from?

"War Eagle" The Legend

There are many urban stories surrounding the origin of "war eagle," but the most popular one tells about the first Auburn football game in 1892 between Auburn and the University of Georgia. While the game was going on, an old Civil War veteran walked to the edge of the field to watch the game. This character had long ago found an injured golden eagle on a battlefield and had kept it as a pet. The eagle jumped from his shoulder and started circling the field while the game went on.

Fans on the Auburn side started to cheer "war eagle" when they saw the eagle circling and after the game ended with Auburn victorious, the eagle supposedly crashed into the center of the field and died. Since then, "war eagle" has become not only a battle cry for the Auburn sports teams, but also a greeting among Auburn students and alumni.

The Auburn War Eagle Today

In continuing the War Eagle tradition of having a live eagle circle the field at every game, Auburn University keeps and trains a golden eagle which is always named War Eagle. The current bird is War Eagle VII, nicknamed Nova. This golden eagle replaced the previous one, War Eagle VI, who was known as Tiger. The War Eagle continues to be a powerful symbol for Auburn University today and can be frequently seen on T-shirts and around campus.

Concerning the Auburn eagle mascot:

 

Brent Fullwood was a star running back for Auburn in the 1980s.  It was discovered that during his last quarter of school, he had simply stopped going to classes.  At that point, he did not have to worry about his academic eligibility for football.   A technicality allowed him to play--Fullwood didn't officially become academically ineligible until after the Sugar Bowl game due to the date on which Auburn officially posted grades.

 

This situation gave rise to the following joke:

 

Did you hear about the Auburn eagle dying?

 

No! What happened?

 

It was Brent Fullwood's job to feed it on his way to class.

 

 

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