A Slippery Way to Win a Football Game

College football season has begun. And on many American college campuses, football isn’t just a sport that some guys play — it’s a way of life for the whole campus. College football stadiums comprise the twelve largest stadiums in the United States by capacity, and students, alumni, and members of the surrounding community typically pack those venues on game days. For students, school spirit quickly becomes part of your identity, and you may also develop a healthy (usually) distaste for your gridiron rivals. Ask anyone who went to the University of Michigan what they think about Ohio State, or vice versa, and you’re certain to get a lot of askew glances and probably a few middle fingers, too.

Michigan-Ohio State isn’t the only college football rivalry out there; hardly. Over the last century plus, many schools have faced off dozens of times, and with that level of football familiarity breeds contempt.And while not one of the biggest or most current rivalries, Auburn and Georgia Tech have some history with one another. And the first time the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets visited Auburn, the fans, not the players, made the biggest play of the day.

The Auburn-Georgia Tech rivalry dates back to 1892, when football was still in its infancy. And it wasn’t much of a contest. The game was played in Atlanta and the visiting Auburn Tigers walloped Georgia Tech 26-0. The next year, the two teams faced off again, but neither team managed to score. And in 1894, they again met in Atlanta, with Auburn running up a comical, 94-0 win. The two didn’t meet in 1895, perhaps because of how humiliating the previous year’s loss was for Georgia Tech (but who knows). Regardless, in 1896, they rekindled their annual match. Before this season, Auburn didn’t have a football field of its own, and the two teams agreed that a game against the Yellow Jackets would be a great opening match.

The game was set for November 7 and Auburn was a clear favorite. They were well-rested — the Tigers had last played about a month earlier, and trounced Mercer College 46-0. Meanwhile, Georgia Tech had played eight days prior, losing to that same Mercer team 6-4. (Football scoring was a little different than it is today; you’ll rarely see a 6-4 score in today’s game.) But the Auburn fans didn’t want to risk their team losing such a monumental game in the school’s history, so they took matters into their own hands.

The War Eagle Reader (an Auburn fan blog) explains:

The buzz, as it were, was that the coach-less team from Georgia was hitting town by train in the wee, gameday morning hours. And so unknown number of Auburn cadets decided to welcome the team by literally greasing the rails for an Auburn victory, conspiring under an Alabama midnight only two days removed from a new moon to coat more than 400 yards worth of rails on either side of the train station with pig grease and lard and soap. The result: an unstoppable, brake-less slide past Auburn half-way to Loachapoka, nearly five miles.

Being 1896, you couldn’t just call an Uber. And there wasn’t a train going from Loachapoka back to the Auburn station any time soon. So the Georgia Tech students did the only thing they could: they walked the five miles back to Auburn. By the time they arrived for the game, they were pretty tired. The results on the scoreboard reflected their fatigue and malaise — Auburn won, 45-0.

Since then, whenever Georgia Tech visits Auburn, the Tiger faithful commemorate the greased tracks prank. They don’t tinker with mass transit, though — they just dress the part. As Bleacher Report notes, “the tracks were never greased again, and trains are obviously no longer the choice of transportation, but the tradition and memory was carried on by students who would parade through downtown in their pajamas.” The event is called the “Wreck Tech Pajama Parade.”

The parade hasn’t taken place since 2005, though — because the two teams haven’t faced off since then. If they do in the future, though, and you’re in Auburn the same weekend, you may want to have a clean pair of PJs ready.

Bonus fact: Georgia Tech’s biggest football rival is their in-state foe, the University of Georgia. The team’s annual meeting is called “Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate” — that should tell you all you need to know about how the two schools feel about each other. But if you need more, the official colors of Georgia are black and red — but they weren’t originally just those two colors. Per this resource on the history of college colors, “in the December 1891 issue of The University’s literary magazine, the editors-selected members of the Demosthenian and Phi Kappa literary societies-had proclaimed those colors to be ‘old gold, black, and crimson.’” They dropped the “gold” because it is close to yellow, which not only symbolizes cowardice but also because that same year, Georgia Tech’s students adopted white and old gold as their colors — and Georgia didn’t want to associate, at all, with their in-state rivals.

From the Archives: The Pride of Georgia Tech: He’s one of Georgia Tech’s most famous alumni, but you’ve never met him, because no one has.