Press & Media

21st Annual Elevator U Educational Conference

The Alliance team just got back from Alabama University where Elevator U (EU) hosted their 21^St Conference. Terri Flint (University of Michigan's Elevator Program Manager) and her group of fantastic volunteers did a wonderful job. For those that don't know, the Elevator U conference is an effective way to learn and network in three short days. The conference targets elevator professionals that work in or around the college, university, government and public institutes. The yearly conference is a vehicle to promote excellence in design, construction and maintenance for all forms of vertical transportation. Eddie Morris (EU President and Elevator Program Manager for University of Virginia) believes as technologies, materials and business practices continually change universities need to ensure they have organization to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and technical expertise to properly build and maintain vertical transpiration that is safe, durable and efficient.

Roll Tide!

So, how did Alabama University come up with the now nationally known chant of "Roll Tide"? Funny you ask, I came across this article during my 5 minute search (Google is awesome, quora.com).

Birmingham sports writer Hugh Roberts wrote an account of the 1907 Auburn game (50 years from being called the 'Iron Bowl') which had been played on a very muddy field.

Time out: if you aren't from Alabama, you need to know this-Alabama has two soils: sand and clay. The sand is pretty. The clay? Well, the clay is brick-red. But this is no modeler's clay. In the summer, digging a hole in Alabama is like digging a hole in a concrete parking lot. In wet times, it's like digging a hole in peanut butter. Walking on wet Alabama clay is risky; you will eventually step off deep enough into it that the clay will suck the shoe right off your foot, no kidding.

Alabama's white visitors' jerseys were getting stained brick red in the deluge/quagmire, and to describe the determined Alabama team that was a 3-to-1 underdog yet played Auburn to a 6-6 tie, Roberts wrote that the team resembled a crimson tide (an oceanic algae phenomenon in which the seawater actually turns a vivid red), repeatedly coming back for more.

The name caught on with the more public and persistent voice of Zipp Newman, another Birmingham sports personality-but Zipp was in the Birmingham News, the big-time.

Eventually, and no one knows when or by whom, someone started connecting the nickname with the event of the ocean's tide rolling in...inexorable, irresistible. Someone said Roll, Tide for the first time.

There you go...your fun fact of the day. Being a Penn State alumnus, I have only one thing to say...

"We are?!....PENN STATE!!"

No, matter what team you're cheering for on game day, keep fighting the good fight. We're all in this together.

Be safe out there,

Travis