School Colors, Stolen Girlfriends, and Yellow Jacket Treachery
by Mike Cheatham

"Turf wars" involving Georgia and its ancient rival, Georgia Tech, began with the playing of the first football game in the series. And the effect of the opponent's underhanded ploy in that 1893 contest resulted in the senior institution's removing the color gold (or yellow) from its official school 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". This selection extended an earlier custom of each class' selecting its colors and publishing them in the yearbook. However, Dr. Charles H. Herty-faculty member, "the father of intercollegiate athletics" at The University, and her first football coach-saw "yellow", as he called it, not gold when he spied the hues on the cover of The Georgia University Magazine.

The 24-year-old holder of a doctorate from Johns Hopkins had led initial efforts to stimulate and harness school spirit, organized the school's first Athletic Association, and saw to it that yellow was eliminated from the colors. Speaking with student leaders, "We all agreed we didn't want yellow around Georgia athletics", reflecting extreme distaste for anything "yellow", or cowardly. (Early on, the "crimson" became good ol' Georgia "red".)

A mailed glove, however, was laid across the face of Georgia athletics that day the rivalry commenced. It was the "somebody-stole-my-gal" maneuver perpetrated by "the Teckity Techs" of '93. Earlier that season, the Techs had chosen as their colors white and gold. And they proceed to deck out 200 young ladies from all-girl Lucy Cobb Institute in those very hues to cheer on Tech's varsity at old Herty Field. Alas, the finishing school's campus lay just about a mile and one-half from the playing field-in Athens! "These are our girls!", the cry arose.

So, until this very day, when a Georgia Bulldog smells out a Georgia Tech "Yellow Jacket," he sees red.

Source: UGA Traditions