The Crimson Tide is a nickname for the University of Alabamas sports teams, particularly their football team. The name originated from a 1907 football game between Alabama and Auburn, where the iron-rich soil in Birmingham turned to a sea of red mud, staining Alabamas white jerseys. Sports editor Hugh Roberts of the Birmingham Age-Herald is supposed to have said the team played like "a Crimson Tide". The name has been used ever since.

The phrase "crimson tide" was a fairly common descriptor back then in regards to life or blood, often in the context of war or poetry. However, neither the words "crimson" nor "tide" appear in the story of the 1907 game, which means either the newspaper unknowingly left out the portion where Alabama would get its future nickname, or perhaps through the passage of time, the origin of "Crimson Tide" was credited to the wrong newspaper, writer, year or game recap.

Hugh Roberts, sports editor for the Birmingham Age-Herald, is widely credited as being the first to use "Crimson Tide" to refer to Alabamas football team. Roberts used the term to describe crimson-and-white-clad Alabamas surprising performance during a rain-soaked 6-6 tie with heavily favored Auburn in 1907.

It is worth noting that the University of Alabamas mascot is an elephant, which was adopted after a 1930 game against Ole Miss where an Alabama player, Everett Strupper, wrote an article describing the game. In the article, Strupper wrote that "At the end of the quarter, the earth started to tremble, there was a distant rumble that continued to grow. Some excited fan in the stands bellowed, Hold your horses, the elephants are coming, and out stamped this Alabama varsity." From that point, Strupper started calling Alabama the "Red Elephants," and the association stuck.