Name-a-Day Calendar, August 24: Tennessee State Tigers
Page 291 of 365
Chosen in: The late 1920s
Chosen by: Unknown
The Tennessee Agricultural & Industrial State Normal School for Negroes (Tennessee A&I) was founded in 1912 and began playing football the next year. Initially, their teams had no official nickname.
I can ballpark when the “Tigers” nickname was instituted, but gaps in the historical record prevent me from pinpointing it. The 1926 edition of the school yearbook The Radio uses no nickname for Tennessee A&I sports teams (and neither do any sources I could find from before this date). When the yearbook returned as Ayeni in 1930, the teams were consistently called the Tigers. Unfortunately, that’s all I’ve got.
Tennessee State currently sports two costumed Tiger mascots (one male, one female) both named Aristocat. Here they are on just the best blog in the history of the internet.
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