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A Jacksonville lawyer, named Austin Miller, 'christened' the University of Florida's football team when he gave The Michie Company, a pennant-designing firm in Charlottesville, Va., the suggestion of "The Alligators."

The first appearance of the alligator emblem, Miller recalled, was in his father's Gainesville store in 1908. The Michie firm had supplied the Millers' with the blue banner measuring six by three feet, showing a large orange alligator, and also with several different types of smaller banners and pennants. Some of them showed the alligator lying down, some rampant, while others included only the alligator's head.

In 1957, the first real live alligator, named Albert, came to UF and lived in a pen. He was eventually moved to Lake Alice but died when a beer bottle became lodged in his throat. Due to the danger of having a live alligator on the field, along with the fact that that school out west kept stealing him, the first vinyl Albert mascot appeared in 1970. Some years later, his “friend” Alberta also arrived.