Cornell Big Red - History

History

Cornell's teams did not have an official name until after 1905, when a recent graduate, Romeyn Berry '04, wrote lyrics for a new football song. The lyrics included the words "the big, red team," and the nickname stuck.

Cornell does not have an official mascot; however, the bear has long been a symbol of Cornell Athletics. In 1915, a live bear named Touchdown first appeared at football games to represent Cornell. The current version, which appears at many of Cornell's sporting events, is a brown bear costume (the live bear was replaced in 1939) that is worn by an undergraduate student; it is referred to as the "Big Red Bear" or by its nickname, "Touchdown." And recently, "red man," a person dressed in a tight red suit, has been seen running up and down the field of men's soccer games.

Cornell's colors, carnelian red and white, date back to the university's Inauguration Day on October 7, 1868.

Many of Cornell's athletic directors have made substantial contributions to collegiate athletics in general, including Romeyn Berry, James Lynah, and Robert Kane.

Read more about this topic:  Cornell Big Red

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    “The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.”
    —Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)

    “I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
    —Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)