History
Though MSU is now a large university, in the 19th century it was a small agricultural college known as the State Agricultural College of Michigan. Thus, when the college fielded its first intercollegiate sports teams in the 1880s, the teams were appropriately named the Aggies. By 1925, the school had expanded beyond agriculture, becoming Michigan State College of Agriculture and Applied Science. To reduce the emphasis on agriculture, the college held a contest to choose a new team name. The chosen entry was the "Michigan Staters." George S. Alderton, then sports editor of the Lansing State Journal, and Dale Stafford, sportswriter for the Lansing Capitol News, felt the name was too unwieldy for newspaper headlines and searched the contest entries for a better choice. They settled on the "Spartans", a name submitted by former Aggie athlete Perry J. Fremont. Alderton and Stafford began using the name in their game accounts, and it soon caught on as the de facto team name. Michigan State's teams have been the Spartans ever since.
Read more about this topic: Sparty
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the history of the future will differ according to the decision which we make.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)