Starting in 2006, the Rutgers University football team has captured the imagination of the nation as the little engine that could.  Since that time, we have heard the story that Piscataway, New Jersey is indeed the birthplace of college football.

But, what led the State University of New Jersey to choose the Scarlet Knights as their mascot?

The school chose scarlet as its official color primarily because scarlet ribbon was easier to come by than orange.  Students preferred orange as the school color, however orange was difficult to come by.  During the first game versus Princeton, the Rutgers players wore scarlet-colored turbans and scarves so they could identify themselves from the Tigers.

In its early days, Rutgers was originally known as Queen’s College and their athletic teams were the Queensmen.  The Board of Trustees adopted scarlet as the official school color and the teams became known as The Scarlet.

A quarter of a century later, the mascot was changed to Chanticleer, which is a fighting rooster used in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales.”  Incidentally, the Chanticleer was adopted during the time that Ozzie Nelson (later famous “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet”) was the quarterback for Rutgers.  The fighting bird was unveiled at a football game and was immediately ridiculed by rivals as being anything but intimidating.

After a student election, the mascot was changed to the Scarlet Knight in 1955.  Coach Harvey Harman was in support of the change saying, “You can call it the Chanticleer, you can call it a fighting cock, you can call it any damn thing you want, but everybody knows it's a chicken.”  It is believed that Harman even purchased the first Scarlet Knight costume in 1955, which was his last year with the program.

The Rutgers mascot has gone through quite an evolution and it took 86 years to settle on the Scarlet Knights.  Nonetheless, it connected to its roots that were planted on that November day so very long ago – a day that gave birth to this thing we now know as the Autumn Spectacle.

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