Name-a-Day Calendar, February 15: Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets
Page 101 of 365
Chosen in: 1905
Chosen by: Literally John Heisman
The Georgia School of Technology1 was established in 1885 and began playing football just seven years later. In its early days, this team went by a litany of nicknames. None of them were official, most were tech-based, and some were sillier than others: the Techs, Tech Boys, Techity Techs, Blacksmiths, Engineers, and Golden Tornadoes.
That last one came from Georgia Tech’s school colors; their primary color has always been gold. However, the school often had trouble finding gold fabric for their jerseys, so most of the time, they wore yellow. The fans did the same. This issue extended to print media, where gold ink was usually replaced with yellow ink for convenience.
The team went on with no official identity for a little over a decade. Then John Heisman came to town. Georgia Tech essentially stole him away from Clemson in 1904 and he’d of course go on to revolutionize football in a way no one had done before and no one has done since. But before he did that, he put an end to Georgia Tech’s identity crisis. Fans had come to be known as “Yellow Jackets” because they usually wore yellow jackets - like, the actual article of clothing, not the bug - to games. Heisman liked this descriptor and wanted it to be used for his players as well. On October 29, 1905, he announced in the Atlanta Constitution that he wanted his team to be known as the Yellow Jackets. And when John Heisman speaks, you listen.
Depictions of Georgia Tech sports as yellow jackets (the bug, not the article of clothing) would naturally come in short order. But the school’s yellow jacket mascot, Buzz, didn’t come about until 1980.
Previous page: Georgia State Panthers
Next page: Gonzaga Bulldogs
Find every page at the Name-a-Day Calendar hub!
They became an Institute in 1948.