VA TECH traditions

[passthebiscuits 6,866]

Since I had little knowledge of VA tech athletics besides Vick and Beamer Ball, I did a little research. What is a Hokie for instance--how did they get the mascot, etc. Interesting stuff from VA Tech website:

What is a Hokie? A look at Tech traditions

Here is the answer to that oft-posed question, "What's a Hokie?" and an explanation of other Tech traditions.

What is a Hokie? The origin of the word "Hokie" has nothing to do with a turkey. It was coined by O. M. Stull (class of 1896), who used it in a spirit yell he wrote for a competition.

Here's how that competition came to be held. Virginia Tech was founded in 1872 as a land-grant institution and was named Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College. In 1896, the Virginia General Assembly officially changed the college's name to Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College and Polytechnic Institute, a name so long that citizens shortened it in popular usage to VPI. The original college cheer, which made reference to the original name of the institution, was no longer suitable. Thus, a contest was held to select a new spirit yell, and Stull won the $5 top prize for his cheer, now known as Old Hokie:

Hoki, Hoki, Hoki, Hy.

Techs, Techs, V.P.I.

Sola-Rex, Sola-Rah.

Polytechs - Vir-gin-ia.

Rae, Ri, V.P.I.

Later, the phrase "Team! Team! Team!" was added at the end, and an "e" was added to "Hoki."

Stull later said that he made up the word as an attention-grabber. Though he may not have known it, "Hokie" (in its various forms) has been around at least since 1842. According to Johann Norstedt, now a retired Virginia Tech English professor, "[Hokie was] a word that people used to express feeling, approval, excitement, surprise. Hokie, then, is a word like 'hooray,' or 'yeah,' or 'rah.'" Whatever its original meaning, the word in the popular cheer did, as Stull wanted, grab attention and has been a part of Virginia Tech tradition ever since.

Orange and Maroon Colors

Since the university had a new name and a new yell, new college colors seemed to be a desirable next step. During 1896, a committee was formed to find a suitable combination of colors to replace the original colors of black and gray, which appeared in stripes on hats, books, athletic uniforms, and other paraphernalia and presented an image resembling prison uniforms.

The committee selected burnt orange and Chicago maroon after discovering that no other college utilized this particular combination of colors. Burnt orange and Chicago maroon were officially adopted and were first worn during a football game versus nearby Roanoke College on Oct. 26, 1896.

Motto, Seal, and Logo

Also in 1896, the university adopted Ut Prosim, Latin for "That I May Serve," as its motto, and a college seal was developed. However, the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors did not officially adopt the seal, which is still used, until 1963.

In 1991, Virginia Tech adopted a university logo, which incorporates an image of the War Memorial with its eight pylons, each representing a different virtue. The inclusion of the numerals "1872," the founding year of the university, reinforces the traditions of more than a century of service to the Commonwealth of Virginia, the nation, and the world.

From Gobbler to HokieBird

The origin of the term "Gobblers" is disputed, with one story claiming it was coined in the early 1900s as a description of how student athletes would "gobble" up their more than ample servings of food. Another story attributes it to the fact that the 1909 football coach, Branch Bocock, wanted to stimulate better spirit amongst his players and initiated them into an impromptu and informal "Gobbler Club."

Thus, the name was already popular when Fred Meade, a local resident chosen by the student body to serve as the school's mascot, had a large turkey pull him in a cart at a football game in 1913. The school's president halted the cart pulling after one game because he thought it was cruel to the turkey. Meade continued to parade his mascot, which he had trained to gobble on command, up and down the sidelines--and did so until another "turkey trainer" took over in 1924 to continue the tradition. Enthusiastic fans and sports writers adopted the "Gobbler" nickname and began to use it regularly. In 1936, a costumed Gobbler joined the live gobbler for at least one game. The use of a live gobbler mascot continued into the 1950s, and the first permanent costumed Gobbler took the field in the fall of 1962.

But the "Gobbler" was not to last, at least in name. In the late 1970s, the university hired a football coach who heard the theory that the Gobbler mascot was based on athletes gobbling their food down. The coach didn't like the image, so he began promoting the "Hokie" nickname and even removed the gobble from the scoreboard--current football coach Frank Beamer had it reinstalled. In 1982, the appearance of the Gobbler mascot costume was changed to one that looked like a maroon cardinal with a snood, and references first appeared to it as "the Hokie mascot," "the Hokie," and "the Hokie bird." The costume worn by today's HokieBird made its first appearance in 1987. HokieBird has won national mascot competitions and has been so popular that the mascot landed an appearance on Animal Planet's "Turkey Secrets," shown annually around Thanksgiving.

Fight Song

Tech Triumph, the university's most popular fight song, was composed in 1919 by Wilfred P. Maddux (class of 1920) and his neighbor, Mattie Eppes. It was officially adopted by the student body in December 1919.

Hokie Stone

Tech exhibits its character and pride every day via its buildings, most of which are made of Hokie Stone. Hokie Stone is actually several types of limestone common in Southwest Virginia and parts of Tennessee and Alabama. No two stones are the same color, varying from grays, browns, and blacks to pinks, oranges, and maroons. Since the mid-1950s, Tech has operated its own quarry, and a resolution passed by the board of visitors during the 1990s decrees that the popular limestone must now appear on every building.

Corps of Cadets

The Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets is another tradition that distinguishes the university, which required corps participation for every able-bodied male for four years until 1923 and then for two years until 1964, when it became voluntary. Virginia Tech remains one of three public universities in the country (Texas A&M and North Georgia College and State University are the others) with both an active corps of cadets and "civilian" lifestyle on its campus.

Skipper

Various cannons have been used off and on for years at Virginia Tech, but in the 1960s one industrious student formally proposed to the student governing body that a cannon be acquired to fire at football games. The proposal was approved but went no further.

About the same time, two cadets from the class of 1964 made a pact at a traditional Thanksgiving Day game with then-rival VMI that they would build a cannon for Virginia Tech (then known as VPI) to outshine--or outblast--VMI's "Little John." The cadets, Alton B. "Butch" Harper Jr. and Homer Hadley "Sonny" Hickam (of October Sky fame), were tired of hearing VMI keydets chant "Where's your cannon?" after firing their own.

Harper and Hickam collected brass from their fellow cadets, added it to metal donated by Hickam's father, collected donations from the corps to purchase other supplies, and used a mold created in one of the engineering departments from Civil War-style plans to make their cannon. They derived the name of the cannon--"Skipper"--from the fact that President John Kennedy, who had just been assassinated, had been the skipper of a PT-boat, and they wanted to do something to honor him.

On its first firing at the next game with VMI, the eager cadets tripled the charge, which blew the hats off half the VMI keydets and shook the glass in the press-box windows of Roanoke's Victory Stadium. They never heard the VMI chant again.

Today, Skipper is fired from outside Lane Stadium when the football team enters the field and when it scores.

[VTemanresu 0]

Since I had little knowledge of VA tech athletics besides Vick and Beamer Ball, I did a little research. What is a Hokie for instance--how did they get the mascot, etc.

I think a big part of the fun of college football is learning about the traditions and culture of other schools.

I was reading up on Auburn as well, and there are some striking similarities with VT. Although VT considers 1872, the date it became public to be the founding date, the school actually started out in 1851 as a military academy called the Olin & Preston Institute. The school is located in an originally German speaking valley, and the faculty and students split sides in the civil war. After the war, Gen. Preston tried to restart the school, but the school never recovered and went bankrupt. The state appropriated the school under the Morrill act and converted it into a public, land grant military institute called Virginia A&M in 1872. In 1896, the school was renamed Virginia Polytechnic Institute.

This is amazingly similar to the history of Auburn, which was founded as the East Alabama Male College 1856 as a Methodist christian school, and was also appropriated under the Morrill act in 1872. It was renamed Alabama Polytechnic Institute in 1899. Both schools were almost always referred to as something other than thier official name, "Virginia Tech" for VPI and "Auburn" for API, until these names were adopted by Auburn in 1960 and "recognized" by VPI in 1963.

As for the term Hokie, what is left out of the official university version of history at VT is that the term 'Hoki' was originally a greeting used by German speaking people in the area, basically like shouting "Hey!". It later became a term for German speaking "valley farmers". This term took on a derisive meaning after the civil war due to the remaining divisions in the area. The Hokie cheer of 1896 starts off with "Hoki, Hoki, Hoki, Hy!". The University says that this is merely a "made-up attention getter", but in reality this term means that the cheer is condescendingly addressed to the local "hollow dwellers".

The original official mascot, the "Gobblers", was also started as a derisive chant that was directed at football players in the early 1890s, since they got double rations of growly (food), and were not required to eat dinner at attention like the rest of the cadets. So both of our mascots are actually insults.

[Proud Tiger 4,261]

passthebisquits.....nice job. I'm glad to have had the opportunity to experience the traditions of both schools.