University of Alabama Pinback Button

This round pinback button was made for supporters of the University of Alabama. The button is white with red text that says, “University of Alabama” and a red “Sailor Elephant” logo. The “sailor elephant” is an example of logos made popular after World War II, where common collegiate mascots were recreated with a sailor hat.

The University of Alabama football team was founded in 1892, with the team known as the “Crimson Tide” ever since the phrase was used by Hugh Roberts, a sports editor at the Birmingham Age-Herald. Roberts used the term to describe Alabama after a match against Auburn in 1907. The team's offensive line, previously referred to as the “Thin Red Line” played so well that Roberts chose to describe it as a “Crimson Tide.”

The team has an elephant, contemporarly known as "Big Al", as their mascot There are two stories of how the elephant became associated with the Crimson Tide. The first is that a local luggage manufacturer provided the 1927 team with custom luggage for their trip to the 1928 Rose Bowl. The company's logo was a red elephant which journalist Grantland Rice compared to the team's size. The second story is attributed to a 1930 quote from Georgia Tech Hall of Famer and Atlanta Journal staff writer, Everett Strupper, who said:

"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.

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The 1930 team that Strupper described in his quote would go on to a 10-0 record, outscoring opponents 217-13. Alabama would meet Washington State in the Rose Bowl that year and defeat them 24-0 on their way to being declared National Champions. Regardless, the elephant was a common fixture in Alabama athletic tradition by 1940. This, at one point, included the presence of Alamite, a live elephant mascot, who would appear on the sidelines of home games and at homecoming parades.

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