Sept. 1, 2017
Each Friday during the 2017 football season, AuburnTigers.com will feature a column from Auburn historian and Athletic Director Emeritus David Housel to commemorate the 125 year history of Auburn football. We hope you enjoy!
By David Housel
One hundred and twenty five years ago a group of young men, students and professors from Alabama Mechanical College (AMC), later to be known as Auburn, were in Atlanta celebrating a 10-0 victory over the University of Georgia in the start of what was to become the oldest and longest football rivalry in the deep south and one of the longest in the nation.
George Petrie, a mild-mannered history and Latin professor was Auburn's first coach. The game had come about because of his deep friendship with Dr. Charles Herty at Georgia.
Both had discovered the new game of "foot ball" at Johns Hopkins and brought it back to their respective campuses when their graduate work was over.
Their teams had been practicing for six months when Auburn challenged Georgia to an inevitable game to see who was better, Petrie and Auburn or Herty and Georgia. The game was set for Atlanta's Piedmont Park as part of a celebration of George Washington's birthday. It was the first real game of "foot ball" played in the south.
Petrie made his 21 players sign an oath that they would not partake of alcohol on the trip to Atlanta to ensure they wouldn't run the risk of embarrassing the college.
They may or may not have had a drink, but they certainly didn't embarrass their school. AMC, now Auburn, has celebrated their exploits ever since. A small loving cup, given to the winner by the J.P. Stephens Company of Atlanta, is proudly displayed in Auburn's athletics museum even unto this day.
Unsure of how many people would come to the game, Petrie and the team, which included Cliff Hare for whom Auburn's stadium would be named, rode the streetcar from the Kimball House, headquarters hotel for both teams, to Piedmont Park where an estimated 5,000 fans, an unheard of number in that day, awaited.
Admission was fifty cents for adults, a quarter for children and a dollar for a carriage space. According to Clyde Bolton, in his wonderful book, War Eagle-The Story of Auburn Football, gate receipts were only $800. The crowd had to have been evangelistically overestimated or a lot people sneaked in without paying.
Auburn's mascot, according to Clyde, was Dabble, a large young man who wore bright orange trousers, a blue spike-tailed blue coat and a white sash. Georgia's mascot was a goat, Sir William, that wore a black coat with "U.G." in red on the side.
The boys from AMC wore white canvas jackets, white padded trousers, orange belts, blue stockings and white caps trimmed in blue. Georgia wore white uniforms, red caps and black stockings.
Uniforms were rather expensive by standards of that day. Canvas jackets cost $1.50, padded pants, $2.25, and hose, fifty cents. Petrie had to borrow money to pay for the uniforms.
The favorite cheer of AMC fans who had come to Atlanta by train that same day was "Rah ra ree, Rah ra ree, Alabama A-M-C" or, for some, the earthier, "Shoot the Billy goat!"
After a scoreless first half, the recovery of a fumbled punt led to a short touchdown run by AMC's Dutch Dorsey. Sometime later, Jesse Culver picked up another fumbled punt near midfield and returned it for an AMC touchdown. Turnovers mattered, even then.
Touchdowns counted four points in those days, extra points, two. Auburn kicked the first extra point, missed the second, and won the game 10-0.
In later years Petrie would write, "I had many happy moments in my life, but not often, if ever, have I been as happy as I as when that game was over.
"Many staid and perfectly sober citizens in the grandstands acted like crazy youngsters. One charming and gentle lady from Auburn, in her excitement, broke her parasol over the head and shoulders of a gentleman in front of her whom she had never seen before."
It got better (or worse, depending on your perspective) as players and fans of both schools gathered at the Kimball House to celebrate the game and the day, the first of what they hoped would become a long standing tradition in years to come.
The Atlanta Journal would later note, "On occasions with such hilarity as this, there are always some who will imbibe too freely. Those individuals were not wanting in the Kimball rotunda Saturday night. There was a varied assortment of drunks, and they were the most ridiculous drunks at that. There was the loud, irrepressible jag and the quite, droll drunk, the fighting drunk and the affectionate drunk. One enthusiast spent the entire evening cursing an imaginary policeman..."
There were, no doubt, sober fans in attendance that night, the AMC "foot ball" team presumably among them.
That's the way it was, February 20, 1892, when college football came to the South for the first time.
The South has never been the same.