Name-a-Day Calendar, May 20: North Alabama Lions
Page 195 of 365
Chosen in: 1947
Chosen by: Unclear
A brief history of what is now the University of North Alabama:
Founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1830 as LaGrange College, originally located in Leighton. Relocated to Florence and renamed Florence Wesleyan University in 1854. Original campus burned down by Union troops in 1863. Sold to the State of Alabama in 1872, at which point it became the first public normal school in the South: the State Normal School at Florence.
The school began playing football in 1912 with no apparent official nickname, but the team wasn’t very good (they lost to Sewanee 101-0) and the program didn’t have much room to grow because the school’s enrollment was mostly women; after all, teaching was largely considered a “female” career at the time. After a horrendous 1928 season that saw losses by scores of 86-0 and 85-0, the school cut its football program.
In 1947, the school expanded its curriculum outside of teacher education and became Florence State College. This appears to be when the “Lions” nickname first took hold, but I could find no information on how it came to be, who selected it, or why (and neither could the university archives). In any case, it wasn’t very well advertised until a couple years later.
For pretty much the whole time football was not being played at the school, the community clamored for its return. They got their wish in 1949, just after the school expanded its curriculum outside of teacher education and became Florence State College. On March 30 of that year, university president Dr. E.B. Norton assembled the student body to announce the return of football starting that fall. After this announcement, lion imagery spread across campus like wildfire; the 1949 edition of the Diorama yearbook, which came out just a couple months later, had lion cartoons on just about every page.
The school saw two major events in 1974: it changed its name to the University of North Alabama and it introduced its first live lion mascot, Leo. North Alabama has been represented by at least one live lion ever since. A male named Leo has always been around, but from 2002 until her death in 2020, Leo III’s sister Una also represented the university. PETA has asked North Alabama to retire Leo. North Alabama has declined.
Previous page: Norfolk State Spartans
Next page: North Carolina Tar Heels
Find every page at the Name-a-Day Calendar hub!
P.S. Special thanks to Special Collections Librarian/Archivist Volodymyr Chumachenko for digging up key information for this page.