Purdue Boilermakers Fun Facts
Boilermakers is the official moniker for the intercollegiate athletic teams of Purdue University located in West Lafayette, Indiana. As is common with athletic nicknames, it is also used as colloquial designation of Purdue's students and alumni at large.
The nickname is often shortened to "Boilers" by fans of the school.
Origin of 'Boilermakers' Nickname
The moniker 'Boilermakers' goes back to 1891 when the Purdue football team defeated nearby rival Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana 44–0. An account of the game in the Crawfordsville Daily Argus News of October 26, 1891 was headlined, "Slaughter of Innocents: Wabash Snowed Completely Under by the Burly Boiler Makers from Purdue." Engineering education in the 1890s at Purdue meant hands-on work in the forge room, where students heated and molded metal, just like the "blacksmiths" and "boilermakers" the football team was called after defeating opponents. The local Purdue press picked up on the name, with a notice in the November 1, 1891 Lafayette Sunday Times, "As everyone knows, Purdue went down to Wabash last Saturday and defeated their eleven. The Crawfordsville papers have not yet gotten over it. The only recourse they have is to claim that we beat their 'scientific' men by brute force. Our players are characterized as 'coal heavers,' 'boiler makers' and 'stevedores.'"
Over the years Purdue's football team were called 'grangers', 'pumpkin-shuckers', 'railsplitters', 'cornfield sailors', 'blacksmiths' and 'foundry hands', but ultimately it was 'Boilermakers' that finally stuck.
Purdue's athletic teams typically wear old-gold-and-black or old-gold-and-white ensembles, colors that have identified Purdue since 1887.
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