Big Al (mascot)
| Big Al | |
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Big Al at Bryant Denny Stadium
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| University | University of Alabama |
| Conference | SEC |
| Description | Anthropomorphic elephant |
| Origin of name | University of Alabama |
| First seen | 1980 |
Big Al is the costumed elephant mascot of the University of Alabama Crimson Tide in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
The origin of the mascot according to Skip dates back to 1930. On October 8, 1930, a sportswriter for the Atlanta Journal, Everett Strupper, wrote about the previous weekend's Alabama-Ole Miss football game. He wrote, "That Alabama team of 1930 is a typical [Coach Wallace] 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."
Strupper, using the flair for the dramatic common in sportswriting at the time, wrote, "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." Strupper and other writers would continue to refer to Alabama as the "Red Elephants," the "red" as a nod to the players' crimson jerseys, and the name stuck throughout what became a national championship season and beyond.
Despite the nickname, it would be nearly five decades before Alabama recognized the animal as its official mascot. However, elephants featured prominently to gameday tradition long before this point. Throughout the 1940s, for instance, the University kept a live elephant mascot named "Alamite" that was a regular sight on game days, and it would carry the year's Homecoming queen onto the field every year prior to kickoff at the Homecoming game. By the 1950s, keeping a live elephant year-round proved to be too expensive for the university. Instead, the UA spirit committee started hiring elephants, often from traveling circuses passing through or by Tuscaloosa, for every homecoming.
In the early 1960s, Melford Espey, Jr., then a student, was the first to wear an elephant head costume to portray the Crimson Tide's unofficial mascot. Espey later became a university administrator, and football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant asked him to take responsibility when student groups asked to resurrect the costumed mascot in the late 1970s.
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