In 1947, the institution on top of the College Avenue hill in Tallahassee, was reorganized and converted from a fine women’s college, named “Florida State College for Women” (FSCW) into a coeducational one named, “Florida State University” (FSU). Immediately, thereafter, FSU began an intercollegiate athletics program including the sport of football. While there had been an intercollegiate athletics program including football at the institution prior to 1905 very little was remembered or known about the sports traditions of the earlier time.
Consequently, FSU started pretty much from scratch in developing its sports traditions and symbols. First off, team colors, “garnet and gold”, were selected for the athletic teams. The colors were of a combination of colors used by FSCW in its intramural sports programs. Then before its second football game in 1947, the name, “Seminoles” was selected for FSU’s athletic teams. Thus, began FSU’s quest to personify and utilize the native-American name that had been adopted. In 1950, the marching band was named, “the Marching Chiefs” and the program adopted a fight song with a reference to “being on the warpath”. When I was in school at FSU during the mid-fifties, the band was led by a pair of male twirlers costumed as Indians known as the “Flying Seminoles”. A few years later, an FSU male gymnast, known as “Sammy Seminole”, dressed as an Indian, did flip-flops and acrobatics along the sideline. At some point there was a costumed bird named, “Tommy Hawk” roaming the sidelines.
Then along came a guy named, “Bill Durham”. As a student, Bill had at one time proposed the idea of utilizing a horse and rider as a symbol for FSU’s teams. The idea had been rejected. But in 1977, the idea got the support of Coach Bobby Bowden’s wife, Anne. With her encouragement, Durham, made the arrangements necessary to get the project going. This included finding an appropriate horse and rider and getting not only the approval of the Chairman of the Seminole Tribe of Florida but receiving a costume from the tribe to be used by the rider. The idea was launched in 1978 and quickly received the approval of FSU fans. At first, it was referred to as a “horse and rider”. Not long after, the rider was given the name, “Osceola”, after the famous Seminole warrior and one of the leaders of the Seminoles during the Second Seminole War. Since then, “Osceola and Renegade” have become well known throughout the college athletic world and as a proud symbol of FSU’s athletics. Bill Durham continues to keep a hand in the development of this symbol, although his son, Alan, is now the main man in charge. At the beginning of each home FSU football game, Osceola rides Renegade to the middle of the field and plants a burning spear. In recent times they have gone to bowl games and participated in parades as well as performing at some Seminole Tribe of Florida festivities.
On numerous occasions I have enjoyed taking pictures of this very popular symbol. Here are a few of them.
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About the author:
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Jim Joanos |
Memories of Garnet and Gold
Jim Joanos and his wife Betty Lou have deep roots at Florida State University. Avid sports fans, they have literally seen, and done, it all. Fortunately for us, Jim loves telling first-hand accounts dating back to FSU’s first football game, a 1947 clash with the Stetson Hatters on Centennial Field, where Cascades Park is today.
The Osceola will run a series of these colorful stories written by the former Tallahassee lawyer and judge, which we feel our readers will find enlightening and/or nostalgic.
Jim and Betty Lou, who was Associate Director of the FSU Alumni Association (1991-2003), have been married 65 years and are each listed as one of FSU’s 100 Distinguished Graduates. The couple were enshrined in the FSU Hall of Fame in 2015 as Moore-Stone Award Recipients. Ironically, both Deans Moore and Stone were instrumental in the Joanoses career development.
“Both Jim and Betty Lou Joanos have been exemplary fans and supporters of Florida State University, both academically and athletically,” said Andy Miller, retired President and CEO of Seminole Boosters, Inc. “You can’t go to an athletic event of any kind that you don’t see both Jim and Betty Lou Joanos together. They love their university as much as they love each other.”
The author has given his permission to reprint this article.
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