It's all in the name of the game

By Charlie Barnes, Executive Director - Seminole Boosters

We are beginning our sixth full year of competition in the Atlantic Coast Conference, and by now we are more than passingly familiar with the colors and symbols of our rivals. We're used to the Blue Devils, Cavaliers, Terrapins, Demon Deacons and the rest.

But who are the Red Terrors? Who were the Pinerooters and the Lions and the Old Liners? And who won a national championship in football as the Golden Tornado?

Well, turns out we're related to all of them through our marriage into the ACC family. The teams sport picturesque nicknames and enjoy colorful histories as well. Here is a quick synopsis to prepare you for football season.

All right, let's put them in batting order. We'll use the sequence we play 'em this fall.

Maryland's Terrapins are first up. All hell broke loose in 1922 when the students' newspaper sought a nickname for the school, and college president H.C. Byrd recommended Terrapins. A name with considerable historic standing was Old Liners, referring to the tag given Maryland's soldiers whose storied heroism helped defeat the British during the Revolutionary War. The passions raged until the late 1930s when Terrapins finally became the official nickname of Maryland's athletic teams.

There is a story, persistent but probably apocryphal, that Maryland teams wore black and gold until a new football coach announced: "I don't care what the school colors are, winning football teams wear red and white!" The official school colors are now red and white and black and gold.

The Clemson Tigers were to be the most formidable challengers to Seminole football when we entered the ACC in 1991-92. The Tigers were more likely to have been named the Lions, as Clemson football players of the late 1800s wore their hair long as a protective measure "due to the lack of helmets." Clemson's men liked the comparisons of their long hair to the manes of lions, but the orange and purple jerseys and stockings more resembled tigers, and that name prevailed.

Some have speculated, unkindly, that the long-term effects of playing without helmets have been passed through generations of Tiger players to the present day. Since they return 16 starters from last year's team, this is probably not the time to examine that issue too closely or too publicly.

Duke's teams were known either as the Methodists or Blue & Whites until a strong effort began to mount in the early 1920s to change the nickname to Blue Devils. Contrary to what one might expect, the name does not come from some whimsical religious counterpoint. It has, in fact, very noble military origins, taken from the French Army's Blue Devils, elite mountain troops, which wore blue uniforms and blue berets.

The first intercollegiate football game ever played below the Mason-Dixon Line took place on Thanksgiving Day in 1888 in front of 600 partisan faithful who saw Duke shut out North Carolina 16-0. Men had to pay 25 cents to see the game, we were told. Women only had to pay 15 cents.

Next come Georgia Tech's Yellow Jackets whose origins are clouded by the confusion of time, but the name first appeared in the Atlanta paper in 1905 and was used to refer to fans who attended Tech athletic events dressed in yellow coats and jackets.

Coached by the legendary John Heisman from 1904 through 1919, Tech was the first "southern" team to win a national football championship.

Tech has played under various monikers, beginning with the Blacksmiths (1902-04), followed by the Engineers and the Techs. As late as 1929, Tech teams were known as the Golden Tornado.

Virginia's team is presented in the media as the Cavaliers, but, among students and alumni, Wahoos is the favorite. The "Wah-hoo-wah" cheer made its appearance in the late 19th century. Wahoos now refers to any University of Virginia student or fan, not just the athletic teams.

Virginia teams have striven under the banner of V-Men, Virginians, and Old Dominion. In 1923 the college newspaper held a contest to produce an alma mater. The winning entry, the Cavalier Song, was not appropriate for an alma mater, but the Cavalier name caught the romantic fantasy of the Virginians. Many descendants of the original Cavaliers, partisans of King Charles I, had settled in the state in colonial times.

Since 1887, North Carolina State teams have been known as Aggies, Farmers & Mechanics, Techs and the Red Terrors. As the story is told, a fan, upset by the 3-3-3 record of the 1922 football team, complained bitterly that they would never win "as long as the players behave like a wolfpack!"

Students loved the name even though it was meant as an insult, and immediately began referring to the team as the Wolfpack. University President J. W. Harrelson hated the name, and in 1946 demanded it be changed. "The only thing lower than a wolf is a snake in the grass."

Faced with a list of alternative names that included Cotton Pickers and Pinerooters, students and alumni resoundingly ended the controversy. Beginning in 1947, all varsity teams were to be called Wolfpack.

The University of North Carolina's mascot is Rameses the Ram (really), a tribute to a great UNC running back from the 1922 team who was known as "The Battering Ram."

Chapel Hill teams play under the name Tar Heels because North Carolina is known as the Tar Heel State. There are differing stories about the origin of the Tar Heel name. One holds that when British General Cornwallis' troops tried to cross into North Carolina, they found a thick layer of tar dumped into the river to slow them down. When the redcoats finally struggled through to the other side, they were black with pitch. Any invader of North Carolina, it was said, would get a tar heel.

The most popular origin of Tar Heels holds that Confederate troops from North Carolina stood in a fierce Civil War battle and saved the day after supporting troops fled. "God bless the Tar Heel boys," said a smiling Robert E. Lee to one of his staff officers.

Wake Forest, our final opponent of the year, is one of the smallest Division I schools, but boasts a long and distinguished athletic history.

From 1895 up till the 1920s, Wake Forest fought under the logo of a black and gold tiger. The team was also known as Baptists and as the Old Gold & Black. Wake had its own Bobby Bowden in the 1920s, a coach named Hank Garrity, who liked his teams "devilish play and fighting spirit." The Demon Deacons name sprang from that observation, and the name stuck.