Auburn has two mascots: the tiger (Aubie) and the golden (war) eagle. The tiger comes from the line in Oliver Goldsmith’s poem, “The Deserted Village,” “where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey.” Aubie was a cartoon character drawn by Birmingham Post-Herald artist Phil Neel in 1959 for a football game program.
The war eagle comes from the story that an Auburn student fighting in the Civil War was injured at the Battle of the Wilderness in Virginia and was left for dead on the battlefield. He came to and discovered that only he and a baby eagle had survived. He then made his way back to Auburn, bringing along the eagle. The soldier and the eagle attended Auburn’s first football game in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park (1892), and legend has it that just after Auburn’s first touchdown, the eagle broke free from his master and soared high above the field. Auburn fans saw the eagle and began to chant the battle cry “war eagle.” Tennessee first played Auburn in football in 1900.