Name-a-Day Calendar, August 25: Tennessee Tech Golden Eagles

Page 292 of 365

Chosen in: 1925

Chosen by: The school’s Athletic Association

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The University of Dixie was founded in Cookeville, Tennessee, in 1909, changing its name to Tennessee Polytechnic Institute just six years later.¹ Intercollegiate athletics began at the school with the formation of a football team in 1922, and not long after that, the school’s Athletic Association figured those teams should probably have a nickname.

The school put together a committee that suggested possible nicknames to the Athletic Association throughout the 1924-25 academic year. They whittled several nicknames down to just two for a final vote of the association: Golden Eagles and Mountaineers. As Cookeville is essentially surrounded on all four sides by foothills and the area contains an abundance of golden eagles, either moniker would have been apt, but the Athletic Association was clear in their preference, voting 139-18 to adopt “Golden Eagles” as the official Tennessee Tech athletics nickname on February 14, 1925.

Tennessee Tech’s first “mascot” would come in 1952, when a group of students traveled to the remains of a hotel that had burned down about 65 miles south in Monteagle to steal a giant metal eagle statue and paint it gold. Today, the Golden Eagles are represented by the costumed Awesome Eagle, who has lived up to his name by winning back-to-back national championships in the FCS division at the Universal Cheerleaders Association competition.

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1. And eventually Tennessee Technological University in 1965