College Sports Nicknames: No "S" Here! Quiz

Answer:

ALABAMA CRIMSON TIDE
The University of Alabama got the name Crimson Tide in the 1907 Iron Bowl against Auburn. Auburn was the heavy favorite, and the game was played in a torrential downpour that turned the field into a morass of red clay mud. Alabama fought hard and held Auburn to a 6-6 tie. Because the red mud had stained Alabama's white jerseys almost all maroon, a sportswriter described the team as a "Crimson Tide" washing over the field.
CORNELL BIG RED
The nickname was coined in 1905 by a recent graduate who was writing a song for the football team. Since Cornell had recently adopted new crimson colored uniforms, the author simply wrote the line, "The big red team is on the field". The nickname was a hit with the student body and eventually shortened to just Big Red.
SYRACUSE ORANGE
The nickname became the title for the university's teams in 2004, but its history dates to 1890. Originally, the school colors were a delicate rose and pea green, but after a crushing athletic defeat, students chose a bold orange to represent the historical House of Orange. They were then known as the Orangemen but the university eventually dropped that and made the name refer strictly to the color itself.
TULANE GREEN WAVE
The nickname came after a 1920 football game against Mississippi College. Before this, the team was simply referred to by its colors and was known as The Olive and Blue. During the game, a track coach who was also a playwright wrote a song titled "The Rolling Green Wave". The song and lyrics became so popular that the newspapers immediately began using the name to describe the team and the name stuck permanently.
ILLINOIS FIGHTING ILLINI
The nickname was officially adopted in the early 1920s. The term "Illini" was already used to describe the students and people of Illinois and came from the Illinois Confederation of Native Americans. The "Fighting" prefix was added as a tribute to the university's students who served and died in World War I. Illinois is said to have chosen this name to represent a singular "spirit of the state".
MARSHALL THUNDERING HERD
The Marshall Thundering Herd nickname appeared in the mid-1920s, replacing earlier informal names like the Big Green. The name came from a popular 1925 Western novel (and later a silent film based on it) titled "The Thundering Herd" by prolific author Zane Grey. A local sports editor thought the name captured the power and momentum of the football team as they moved across the field.
JARVARD CRIMSON
The Harvard Crimson became the school's nickname in 1875. It got started with the crew team. In 1858 two rowers bought crimson scarves and handed them out to their teammates so spectators could distinguish Harvard's boat from the other competitors during a regatta. The color became so popular that the student body eventually voted to make it the official school color. And it then became the official nickname.
NOTRE DAME FIGHTING IRISH
The nickname was officially adopted by the school in 1927, though it had been used informally for years. After checking many sources, including the school site itself, I found there is no single origin of how it got the nickname. One of the more popular suggestions is that in a halftime speech during a 1909 game against Michigan a player yelled, "What's the matter with you guys? You're all Irish and you're not fighting!"
NORTH CAROLINA WOLFPACK
For years, North Carolina State had many nicknames but nothing official. Finally, the Wolfpack name was officially adopted in 1921 following a letter from an alumnus who complained that some of the football players were as "unruly as a pack of wolves". The school took the name Wolfpack because it perfectly captured the idea of a singular, cohesive unit that was more powerful together than as individuals.
NAVT MIDSHIPMEN
The Navy Midshipmen nickname is a collective title that has been used since the school's first football game back in 1879. The name comes from the official rank of the students at the United States Naval Academy, who are all known as midshipmen. Like the brigade in the armed services, the team is almost always referred to as a single entity (e.g., "Navy is on the move").

The plural teams in the list are the University of Georgia Bulldogs (my alma mater so I had to include them!), University of Michigan Wolverines, Clemson Tigers, University of Texas Longhorns, and Brown University Brown Bears.