The clicking and clacking of bottle caps has been loud on campus this week, which means Fish Spurs are back.
Cameron Halbert, Sam Houston Sanders Corps Center guard commander and political science senior, said the Fish Spurs tradition dates back to games against SMU.
“In 1916, A&M played its first game against SMU and in the early 1930s, SMU moved their mascot to a pony and it was in the late ’30s that Fish Spurs were originally established,” Halbert said.
Halbert said Fish Spurs was one of several traditions lost during the period around World War II. Fish Spurs were eventually recovered and adapted to different campus changes. When A&M stopped playing SMU, Fish Spurs then became associated with the Texas Tech game before returning to SMU after the move to the SEC.
Halbert said the idea behind Fish Spurs is to get the student body motivated to “spur the hell out of the ponies” on Saturday.
“It’s definitely an interesting tradition because it’s traditionally motivating, albeit in a very odd way of building school spirit,” Halbert said. “You can hear the jingling of the makeshift spurs and you get reminded of what football team you’re going to be playing, because normally you have to look it up on a schedule, but with Fish Spurs you’re like, ‘Ah, we’re playing SMU this week, that’s right.’”
To make Fish Spurs, freshmen cadets collect bottle caps and flatten them. After spray-painting them the class color — green this year — they are attached to the freshmen shoes with wire. Each shoe can has 18 bottle caps on it, signifying the freshman class year.