Thanks to Annie for asking a very good question about the Alabama Mascot and what it has to do with the Crimson Tide. Short answer? Well, Big Al doesn’t really have anything to do with the Crimson Tide, in fact, until 1907 the University of Alabama’s football team was just referred to in newspapers as either “Varsity”, or “Crimson White.”

In 1907, Hugh Roberts, a sports writer for the Birmingham-Age Herald, tagged the line “Crimson Tide” after a rough and tough game between Alabama and Auburn. The game was played on a muddy and wet field, Auburn was the favorite to win, however the “Thin Red Line” played an awesome game in the red mud and held Auburn to a 6-6 tie, and forever earned the name “Crimson Tide.” Former sports editor of the Birmingham News, Zipp Newman, is most credited with popularizing the name more than any other writer.

Alabama became associated with the “elephant” back in 1930 when Coach Wallace Wade assembled a great football team. On October 8, 1930, a sports writer for the Atlanta Journal, Everett Strupper, wrote a story of the Alabama-Mississippi game he had witnessed in Tuscaloosa.

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.

Strupper went on to say, “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 the 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 many other writers continued to refer to the Alabama linemen as “Red Elephants,” the color referring to the crimson jerseys. The 1930 team ended the season 10-0. It shut out 8 opponents and allowed only 13 points all season, while scoring 217. The “Red Elephants” then “rolled” over Washington State 24-0 in the Rose Bowl and were declared National Champions.

So, that’s the story of how old Big Al came to be. I had read this story a few years ago after a game; I believe it was an article within the game fliers they give you. I obviously had to go back and get some details because while I remembered the story, I didn’t remember all the names.

I hope this covers it!