Rally towels are a staple of modern sporting events, but that wasn’t always the case. Like every tradition, the act of whipping a rally towel to support your team had to get its start somewhere. And, like many traditions, the origin story for rally towels can change, depending on who you ask.
In Major League Baseball, the Minnesota Twins’ “Homer Hanky” might be considered the first rally towel, but it was created in 1987. When discussing the overall origins of the rally towel tradition, this is pretty late. Other sports leagues had had rally towels for years by then.
Hockey Rally Towels
Hockey fans will probably tell you about Roger Neilson, head coach of the Vancouver Canucks from 1982 to 1984. In a 1982 game against the Chicago Blackhawks, Coach Neilson became upset with some of the referee’s calls, which (among other things) invalidated one of the Canucks’ recent goals. He stuck a white towel on the end of one the players’ hockey sticks, and waved it like a flag at the other team as a sign of “surrender.” This got him ejected from the game, but Vancouver fans took to waving towels as a sign of support for their team and their coach. Thus, the Canuck’s “Towel Power” tradition was formed, the first of its kind in the NHL.
Football Rally Towels
But football fans know that rally towels as a whole predate Coach Nielson’s stunt by a number of years. On the gridiron, the first team to have an official rally towel was the Pittsburgh Steelers. “The Terrible Towel,” as it is known, is probably the most famous rally towel in any sport, and has even spawned a whole line of other merchandise, known collectively as “Terrible Stuff.” The Terrible Towel made its debut in 1975. Myron Cope, the Steelers’ radio broadcaster at the time, came up with the idea for the Terrible Towel; he wanted a publicity item that would be natural for fans.
It needed to be lightweight and portable so that it could be taken to all the games, and visible when displayed en masse by the crowd. Cope didn’t know he was inventing a tradition. The Terrible Towel was originally designed just with the 1975 playoffs in mind. But the Terrible Towel caught on like wildfire. In fact, they were so popular that Pittsburgh retailers began selling out of yellow and gold hand towels, which were bought by fans who couldn’t get their hands on the sold-out official Terrible Towel.
Origin Of Rally Towels
Even the Terrible Towel, however, might not be the whole story of the origin of rally towels. Even before the Steelers adopted an official rally towel, some fans were already waving towels at sporting events. For instance, a Steelers fan and local sports promoter named Pete “Figo” Carvella was noted for waving a towel at football games. Some people think that he may have been part of the inspiration for the Terrible Towel, but this would be quite difficult to verify.
However, they got their start, though, rally towels (and the energy they bring to crowds all over the country) are here to stay.
