"The Golden Hurricane" is Born
8/30/2004 12:00:00 AM | Tulsa Hurricane
Pennsylvania was one of the hotbeds of early American football. The University of Pennsylvania, Penn state, Lafayette, and Lehigh are still in the gridiron picture - but before World War I the smaller schools - Swarthmore, Carlisle, and Grove City Normal - were considered as leading football powers. Howard Acher lived in Grove City and spent his college years at the local school, where he led the football team to some of its greatest triumphs. Tall, handsome, and affable, Acher came to Tulsa with his knowledge of football, a charming wife, and an eight-cylinder automobile. Any coach in 1922 who could own a high-cylinder automobile must be successful, wide-eyed Tulsans reasoned. Acher was well-to-do; and, as in the case of Sam McBirney (Head Coach, 1908, 1914-16), he was coaching primarily because of his love of the game. Fortune smiled on him in the move to Tulsa, inheriting both a good team and an excellent schedule. And he got the utmost from both. Curiously enough the team started working out in the fall of '22 with a new nickname, the "Yellow Jackets." One of the second string squad members was the campus correspondent for a Tulsa newspaper, a reporter with much excess energy and new ideas. The team was wearing black and yellow uniforms that year instead of the usual black and orange. Result: the player-reporter set about on a one-man campaign to name the team. The opening game was with TCU. When the Tulsans pulled an upset out of the books by downing the Horned Frogs, 21-0, the first-year coach realized he had a potentially great team, and was anxious to give it the utmost publicity. The "name" affair had given him an idea - why not officially adopt a name and stick to it? Since 1895, teams representing the school had been called by various titles, depending upon the writer. Most common was the term "Kendallites," but they were also referred to as "Presbyterians" "Tigers" (possibly because of the Princeton influence on he faculty), "Orange and Black," "Tulsans," and, of course "Yellow Jackets." Acher, fired with the idea, wanted a distinctive tag for his team. He checked the records, and after a remark in practice about "roaring through opponents," had seriously considered "Golden Tornadoes." But a check showed that Georgia Tech already had chosen that tag in 1917. The team was now preparing for the important game with Texas A&M. Acher still wanted a title for the Texas sports writers. From the tornado, he evolved meteorologically to the hurricane. A few days before the team entrained for Dallas, Acher asked the squad to vote on the name "Golden Hurricane," the gold being added because of the color of their new jerseys. The team, the part-time writer excepted, approved. (With die-hard tenacity, the part-time writer's account of the game appeared the following Wednesday referred to the "Yellow Jackets" from the University of Tulsa.) --- Excerpts from the book "The Golden Hurricane . . . Fifty Years of Football at The University of Tulsa, 1895-1945", written by Robert Rutland and published by The Tulsa Quarterback Club in 1952.
