George Petrie (1866-1947) was an American scholar and educator who played a crucial role in the development of Auburn University. From 1887 until his retirement in 1942, Petrie held various positions at Auburn, including professor of history and Latin, head of the History Department, and dean of the Graduate School. Petrie also organized and coached Auburn's first football team in 1892.

Petrie is the first Alabamian to earn a Ph.D. degree. He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Virginia in 1887 and a Ph.D. in "history, political economy, and jurisprudence" from Johns Hopkins University in 1890. At Auburn (known until 1892 as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama, and from 1892 to 1960 as Alabama Polytechnic Institute), Petrie is considered the founder of both the History Department and the Graduate School, as well as the school's athletic program.

His time at the University of Virginia inspired Petrie to choose burnt orange and navy blue as the official colors for Auburn's athletic teams. Upon organizing the first Auburn football team in 1892, Petrie arranged for the team to play the University of Georgia team at Piedmont Park in Atlanta, Georgia. Auburn won the game, 10-0, in front of 2,000 spectators. The game inaugurated what is known to college football fans as the Deep South's Oldest Rivalry.

Auburn was one of the first colleges to field a football team. Their 1892 game against Georgia in Atlanta was the first intercollegiate football game in the South.

References  Jernigan, Mike (2007). Auburn Man: The Life and Times of George Petrie. The Donnell Group.

Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Petrie_(American_football)

Auburn Creed

Petrie is perhaps best known as the author of the Auburn Creed:

The creed has been a well known symbol of the university ever since Petrie wrote it in 1943.

Shouts of "Rah, rah, ree, Alabama AMC" may have inspired Auburn to a muddy 10-0 victory over the University of Georgia in the Deep South's first major intercollegiate football game, played February 20, 1892, before a crowd estimated at 2,000 in Atlanta's Piedmont Park.  Georgia had "tuned up for the contest by clobbering Mercer, 50-0, January 20," Jesse Outlar wrote in Between the Hedges.  Auburn refused to be intimidated by Georgia's touted blocking or by the splendid Tally Ho -- the horse-and-buggy equivalent of a Rolls Royce -- decked out in Georgia's colors.  Members of the squad, left to right, front row: Clifford Le Roy Hare, Professor Charles H. Barnwell, Dorsey, Richard Billup Going, Lupton.  Second row: Robert Mailard Stevens, H.H. Smith, Henry T. Debardeleben, Professor Anthony Foster McKissick, Culver, Alexander Dowling McLennan.  Third row: Walter Evan Richards, Arnold Whitfield Herren, Seaborn Jesse Buckalwe, Francis Marshall Boykin, George William Dantzler, Union Anderson Culbreath, George Y. McRae, Eugene Hamilton Graves, Raleigh Williams Greene, David Edwin Wilson, Charles Henry Smith.  Back row: Professor George F. Atkinson, Bob"Sponsor" Frazier (mascot), Petrie.

Taken from http://diglib.auburn.edu/gsdl/cgi-bin/library?e=d-000-00---0loguesms--00-0-0--0prompt-10---4------0-1l--1-en-50---20-about---00031-001-1-0utfZz-8-00&a=d&c=loguesms&cl=CL1.1&d=HASHcadd5857754193fd26fda1

Auburn's outnumbered coeds stuck together in Dr. George Petrie's history class in 1914.  They found him a friend and also a hard teacher.  Petrie's sister-in-law, Kate Lane (wearing hat), graded papers for him.  Petrie trained history teachers and scholars and served on the faculty and administration from 1887 to 1942, with a break in service in 1889-91.  He founded the History Department in 1891, introduced tennis to Auburn in 1888 and football in 1892.  A visitor said of Petrie, "I could have listened to him all day; it is not difficult to imagine how he inspired students with a genuine love for history."

Photo thought to be from the first Auburn-Georgia game. (Courtesy of the Atlanta Historial Society)

The first Auburn-Georgia game was played at Atlanta's Piedmont Park on February 20, 1892, when Dr. George Petrie of Auburn offered a challenge to his friend Dr. Charles Herty of Georgia, the man who would perfect the process for making paper out of southern pine. While in graduate school at Johns Hopkins, Both Petrie and Herty learned about "football". Until they brought the game to Auburn and Athens, "football", as it was called, had never been played south of Raleigh, NC.

The football game between Auburn-Georgia didn't go unnoticed by other near-by colleges in Atlanta. 150 students, from Georgia Tech, arrived an hour before kickoff and, though it would be unbelievable in this day and time, they wore red and black and cheered for Georgia.

Only 3,000 people attended that first Auburn-Georgia game. Tickets were fifty cents for adults and a quarter for children. A carriage space sold for $1.00.

Auburn won the game 10-0.

Both Auburn and Georgia had different mascots for that history making first game in 1892. Georgia had a white goat named Sir William. Auburn's team was accompanied by a one man cheering leading squad, an African American, dressed in orange and blue.

According to the legend in 1864, an Auburn student, fighting at the Civil War's Battle of the Wilderness in Virginia, was left for dead in no-man's land, that stretch of earth between the two armies that belonged to neither friend nor foe. After the battle, all that was left alive there was the Auburn student and a baby eagle. With the eaglet in his pocket, the wounded soldier eventually made his way back home to Alabama. He later returned to Auburn and resumed his education, nurturing the eagle back to health and maturity. Later the man joined Auburn's Faculty after graduation.

Legend has it that football and "War Eagle" came to Auburn the same day, Feb. 20, 1892, when Auburn defeated Georgia 10-0 at Atlanta's Piedmont Park in the first real college football game played in the Deep South. When the train departed Auburn for Atlanta that fateful day, the instructor and the eagle, known to all Auburn people as "War Eagle" because of the circumstances which brought the man and eagle together, were on the train. As the game began, the eagle took to flight and began to circle the field. As the eagle continued to fly up and down the field, he was seemingly watching over his Auburn Tiger team, and supporting their efforts in his only way possible. Soon the crowd began to chant and then shout his name in unison..."War Eagle!" At the end of the game, the old eagle, now almost 30 years old, collapsed and died on the playing field.