the name aggies, short for agriculturalists, is a fixture of many universities that began as land-grant and agricultural colleges. early usu sports teams were sometimes simply referred to as the "farmers" as well as the aggies, though the former name was never official. beginning in the 1930s, an image of a "bean-pole farmer" with a pitchfork in hand and hay stalk in mouth began to be used to represent the college, though this too was never made official, and disappeared following the transformation into a full-fledged university in 1957.