Name-a-Day Calendar, January 31: Florida Gators

Page 86 of 365

Chosen in: 1911

Chosen by: Nobody can agree

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The first confirmed time a University of Florida team was called the Gators (or “Alligators”, as was common in the nickname’s infancy) was October 20, 1911, when two separate newspapers used the name at once. Florida’s football team had just embarked on a road trip to South Carolina for two huge games against South Carolina and Clemson. Jacksonville’s Florida Times-Union noted that these were perhaps the biggest football games in the history of any Florida college and wished: “may the ‘Gators’ win ‘em both”. Meanwhile, Columbia’s The State ran the headline “Gamecocks clash with Alligators”.

That accounts for the when. Unclear are the who and the why. Here’s the explanation that seems the least nonsensical (to me, at least): the captain of the football team, Neal Storter, was nicknamed “Bo Gator” and sportswriters naturally extrapolated the “Gator” identity to the whole team because alligators are a prominent Florida animal. Storter himself denies this and credits sportswriters for coming up with the name on their own, but how could he know they weren’t thinking of him when they penned the name?

Perhaps they already had alligators on the brain thanks to a lawyer from Jacksonville, who retroactively claimed the name as his own creation nearly 40 years after the fact. In 1907, Austin Miller was a law student at the University of Virginia. His father Phillip lived in Gainesville and owned a “drug and stationery” store near Florida’s campus. While visiting his son in Charlottesville, the elder Miller stopped by a decoration manufacturer to commission some pennants and banners for his customers back in Gainesville. When the manager asked the Millers what emblem they would like on these decorations, they realized the school had no official symbol. As Austin tells the story, he came up with the “alligator” branding idea on the spot and, once he returned from the University of Virginia library with a picture of an alligator for the manufacturer, the first “Florida Alligators” merchandise was born.

Whether or not you believe this had anything to do with the eventual naming of the team, the story was printed in the Times-Union in 1948, so at the very least, it’s probably true. The university even features it prominently on their website. But Phillip Miller’s store wasn’t evidently affiliated with the university, and the nickname didn’t become popular in reference to university sports teams until papers started printing it in 1911. It’s entirely possible these decorations gradually made the alligator a campus symbol popular enough for a newspaper in South Carolina to recognize it as the school mascot, but I’m choosing to believe this was either a coincidence or a case of great minds thinking alike.

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