Chosen in: 1970

Chosen by: Unclear

Mercyhurst College (now Mercyhurst University) of Erie, Pennsylvania, opened its doors as a women’s school in 1926. Intercollegiate athletics were not initially a focus at the school. Then it became coeducational in 1969 and an athletics program was started the next year.

Newspaper archives are a wonderful thing. The archive for Mercyhurst’s student newspaper, The Merciad, is freely available online, and I have them to thank for the knowledge that Mercyhurst’s sports teams have always been known as the Lakers. In the September 18, 1970, edition, sports editor Bill Dopievella notes that the nickname beat out “Knights” and “some rather derogatory terms” and originates from the school’s location near Lake Erie.

Unfortunately, that’s all the information we have because Dopievella wrote the entire passage in the passive voice. “A nickname had to be found,” he writes, and “the name and concept of ‘Lakers’ was chosen”. Who suggested the nickname? Who chose it over the other contenders and how? I guess we’ll never know.

In a timeline of the school’s history, Mercyhurst’s website notes that women’s teams were also originally known as the Lakerettes, though because the first teams founded were men’s teams, that nickname didn’t show up in the September 18, 1970, article. Its first appearance in The Merciad came from sports editor Dario Cipriani on November 20, 1972, referring to the volleyball team. This women’s nickname appears to have been discontinued after the 1977–78 season, with its last usage in The Merciad coming on April 24, 1978.

Since then, all Mercyhurst sports teams have been known simply as the Lakers. Their mascot is a costumed sailor named Luke the Laker.

Subscribe now

Previous page: Houston Cougars

Next page: Howard Bison

Find every page at the Name-a-Day Calendar hub!

Chosen in: 2006

Chosen by: A university task force

The school that is now the University of West Georgia was founded in 1906, with intercollegiate athletics coming by 1927; that’s the earliest record I could find of their football team. Originally known as Fourth District A&M School, the school’s first teams were known as the Aggies. Then the school became West Georgia College in 1933 and students wanted a new identity, so they chose to call themselves the Braves.

This nickname was under no true threat of removal until the NCAA’s 2005 ruling against unsanctioned Native American nicknames, imagery, and mascots, at which point replacing it became a necessity because the university did not have the blessing of any local peoples or tribes. As university president Dr. Beheruz Sethna put it:

“I also called other universities that still had Native American mascots, and all of them had put hundreds of thousands of dollars into the local Native American communities. When I came back to West Georgia, I totaled up the money that we put into the local Native American communities and I couldn’t find five cents. I could not find one thing we had done for any Native American cause.”

To decide on a new identity, Dr. Sethna commissioned a 12-member task force comprising student athletes, student government members, faculty, staff, alumni, and athletics boosters. The task force did their due diligence—taking suggestions, running polls and surveys and forums—to whittle endless possibilities down to three: Patriots, RedHawks, and Wolves.

From these, the task force recommended “Wolves” to Dr. Sethna, who accepted the recommendation. The new identity was announced on January 12, 2006, and took effect that fall.

Why “Wolves”? Several reasons: “West Georgia Wolves” is alliterative, the visual identity fit in with the university’s red/white/blue color scheme, red wolves are native to the Southeastern United States, and—most importantly—“Wolves” polled most favorably among current students and especially student athletes. It was a no brainer. Plus, Dr. Sethna had “a vision of a whole football stadium filled with 10,000 students and fans howling when we win a game”, which he described as “a powerful and unbeatable image”.

As an added bonus, West Georgia was no longer sharing an identity with the nearby and much more popular Atlanta Braves. Dr. Sethna noted the increased marketing opportunities as a reason for making the switch but it’s not like they had any say in the matter.

West Georgia’s wolf mascot is not a red wolf but a blue one: the costumed Wolfie.

Subscribe now

Previous page: Le Moyne Dolphins

Next page: Abilene Christian Wildcats

Find every page at the Name-a-Day Calendar hub!

Chosen in: 1947

Chosen by: The staff of The Dolphin student newspaper

Le Moyne College was established in DeWitt, New York—a suburb of Syracuse—by the Society of Jesus (commonly known as Jesuits) in 1946 and named for missionary Simon Le Moyne. The dolphin has been a central university symbol since October 24, 1947, when the school’s student newspaper, titled The Dolphin, published its first issue.

In this issue, they explained their reasoning for selecting this title:

“It is a well-known item of history that, while the early Christians were being persecuted at Rome, they would assemble for services at a secret place, usually in the catacombs. They would be informed of a contemplated meeting by the figure of a fish being left in the vicinity of their homes…

“It was not until the second century that the specific use of the dolphin as a Christian symbol became common. It … seems to have been … that the dolphin was popularly considered to be friendly toward men … also there were associated in the imagination … the ideas of love and tenderness…

“Drawing closer to home, we note that just as the figure of the dolphin was to be seen on the seal of the Bishop of the ancient See of Syracuse, so also is it to be found on the seal of the present head of our own Diocese of Syracuse….”

If you’d like specific people to thank, the issue credits the Class of 1951 as well as six editors: Ann Byron, Donald Franklin, Francis Gillin, Gerald Girvin, Timothy Kelleher, and Mary Therese King.

Le Moyne began playing intercollegiate men’s basketball later that school year. The Dolphins took to calling them the Dolphins for basically the same reason. It stuck.

Le Moyne is represented by a costumed dolphin named Iggy.

Subscribe now

Previous page: Youngstown State Penguins

Next page: West Georgia Wolves

Find every page at the Name-a-Day Calendar hub!

Chosen in: 1933; became official in 1938

Chosen by: There are conflicting stories, but it probably came from the fans

The school that is now Youngstown State University dates back to 1908, first sponsoring intercollegiate athletics in 1927, when they formed a men’s basketball team. This team had no nickname until February 9, 1933.1

On that day, one of two things happened that gave the team its “Penguins” nickname. They were playing a road game at West Liberty State Teachers College2 in West Liberty, West Virginia, and all accounts seem to agree that it was a cold and snowy day. The bus that transported the team 80 miles south to West Liberty was unheated. The first nickname origin story has it that players and fans passed time on this trip by discussing what their team could be called and some unspecified person suggested “Penguins” to mass fanfare.

The second (and more popular) origin story says that the nickname came from the team’s arrival at the West Liberty gym. The visitors’ locker room was also unheated, so Youngstown’s players were essentially human blocks of ice by the time they got dressed to enter the gym and play the game. So, as they took the floor to play in an athletic event, they had to find a way to warm up quickly. As the story goes, they started waddling around the floor and swinging their arms like penguins, leading fans to call them the Penguins. Youngstown proceeded to lose the game 33-28, but the comparison to flightless birds stuck with the fanbase and the student body.

The team continued to be called the Penguins, but it remained unofficial until the school started a football team in 1938. Only then did the student body consider adopting an actual mascot, at which point a student body poll concluded that the “Penguins” identity should stick full-time.3 The next year, the Mahoning County Natural Resources Board purchased a live penguin, Pete, to serve as the school’s first mascot.4

This all happened when the school was called Youngstown College. It became Youngstown University in 1955 and Youngstown State University in 1967, marking 1967 as the first year the teams were known as the Youngstown State Penguins.

Today, Youngstown State is represented by two costumed penguin mascots: Pete and Penny Penguin. They enjoy chowing down on delicious burgers at Youngstown State men’s basketball games.

Subscribe now

Previous page: Yale Bulldogs

Next page: Le Moyne Dolphins

Find every page at the Name-a-Day Calendar hub!

Chosen in: It’s nebulous; mascot debuted in early 1890s but nickname wasn’t popular until late 1900s

Chosen by: Again, nebulous

Yale University was founded in 1701, with modern intercollegiate athletics beginning play in 1872, when their football team was founded. The team originally claimed no nickname, and a nickname wouldn’t come until after they introduced their mascot.

The common story of how Yale got their bulldog mascot is that student Andrew Graves ‘92 simply purchased a bulldog named Handsome Dan in 1889, but this is incorrect. Handsome Dan did exist, but he wasn’t the first Yale bulldog mascot. A different bulldog, Harper, debuted in 1890, with Handsome Dan taking over in 1892.1

Handsome Dan’s adoption did not immediately lead to Yale’s sports teams being called the Bulldogs. In fact, not once during Handsome Dan’s time as Yale’s mascot, from his introduction in 1892 until his death in 1898, were Yale’s sports teams verifiably called the Bulldogs in print. It wasn’t until 1906, when Yale had no mascot, that the New York Tribune finally referred to the football team as the “Yale bulldogs”. The animal’s use as a nickname became gradually more popular from there and was ubiquitous by the early 1910s.

The first successor to Handsome Dan wouldn’t come until 1933. Today, Yale is represented by Handsome Dan XIX.

Subscribe now

Previous page: Xavier Musketeers

Next page: Youngstown State Penguins

Find every page at the Name-a-Day Calendar hub!

Chosen in: 1925

Chosen by: Board of Trustees member Reverend Francis J. Finn

Xavier University’s roots date back to 1831, when it was founded as the Athenaeum. It became St. Xavier College in 1840 and began playing intercollegiate sports in 1901, beginning with a now-defunct football team. St. Xavier’s first sports teams were usually known as the Saints, a nickname that came naturally to the school with a saintly name and which eventually grew to become quasi-official.

This changed in 1925, when Board of Trustees member Reverend Francis J. Finn suggested that the school adopt the musketeer as their mascot to highlight their “all for one, one for all” mentality. The university notes that Rev. Finn was inspired by Charles de Batz de Castelmore d'Artagnan, an actual French musketeer in the 17th century, and that he felt d’Artagnan represented Xavier’s historical ties to France: the first priest to navigate the Ohio River to Cincinnati was a French Canadian, many of the first students at the school were Frenchmen1 from Louisiana, and the first Jesuit priest of the school was from French-speaking Belgium.

The nickname stuck, even after the school became Xavier University in 1930. A costumed version of d’Artagnan would eventually become the school mascot, though it didn’t debut until 1965. Xavier also represents themselves with some blue blob thing for reasons I don’t feel like explaining.

Subscribe now

Previous page: Wyoming Cowboys/Cowgirls

Next page: Yale Bulldogs

Find every page at the Name-a-Day Calendar hub!

Chosen in: 1891

Chosen by: Some random fan

The University of Wyoming opened in 1887, predating Wyoming’s statehood by three years. Intercollegiate athletics kicked off in 1893 but the “Cowboys” nickname was in place before then.

Before they established an intercollegiate football program, Wyoming played club football. According to the university, in 1891, the club football team was shorthanded for a game against the local Cheyenne Soldiers. They recruited a local cowboy (like, an actual cowboy) named Fred Bush to fill out the roster, and he apparently took the field wearing his cowboy apparel, to which a fan yelled, “hey, look at the cowboy!”. A lot of the team’s regular players were also formerly cowboys, so that offhand comment stuck with them and became the team’s nickname.

When the intercollegiate team debuted in 1893, they were called the Cowboys from the start. When women’s sports took hold at the university in the mid-1970s following the passage of Title IX, those teams were naturally called the Cowgirls.

Wyoming is one of three schools that has Pistol Pete as its mascot.1

Subscribe now

Previous page: Wright State Raiders

Next page: Xavier Musketeers

Find every page at the Name-a-Day Calendar hub!

Chosen in: 1970

Chosen by: Student body contest

Wright State University was originally founded in 1964 as a branch campus of both Miami University (the one in Ohio) and Ohio State University. They became an independent institution in 1967 and, best I can tell, began playing intercollegiate athletics in the 1970-71 school year.

Before play started, a mascot was to be selected. In fall 1969, the fraternity Sigma Tau Epsilon began soliciting suggestions, of which they received about 160. They gave those suggestions to the student government, who appointed a campus-wide committee to whittle the list down to nine: Acheans, Chargers, Cobras, Knights, Raiders, Rams, Ramblers, Rangers, and Warriors.

From here, the selection process included two rounds of voting, each concurrent with a wider student body election. With late April 1970’s student senate elections came the first round, meant to narrow the list even further to just three finalists. However, for…some reason, four options advanced to the final round: Acheans, Cobras, Raiders, and Warriors. Student newspaper The Guardian was very pointedly angry that only 6% of the student body voted in this election.

The final round came during another student government election in early May, and the results were as follows: Raiders 141, Cobras 121, Warriors 102, Acheans 100, Rams 76, Knights 64. I have no idea what those last two were doing in there given they were evidently eliminated in the first round, but the point is moot: “Raiders” won and became the official nickname and mascot of Wright State’s future sports teams. We don’t know who originally suggested the nickname or why, but according to the university, the most popular theory is that the student body was inspired by the NFL’s Oakland Raiders, who were absurdly good at the time.

The first time I could find “Raiders” appearing in print to refer to a Wright State sports team was in the September 30, 1970, issue of The Guardian, detailing a men’s soccer victory over the same Miami they split from three years prior. The story refers to the team as the Raiders twice and includes a photo of the team in a huddle, captioned “The Raiders!”.

Despite the 1970 contest being advertised as a “mascot” contest, nobody immediately knew how to make a mascot out of the “Raiders” nickname, and nothing debuted until 1986. Since then, there’s been a costumed Viking, a costumed brown wolf, and the current costumed gray wolf named Rowdy Raider.

Subscribe now

Previous page: Wofford Terriers

Next page: Wyoming Cowboys/Cowgirls

Find every page at the Name-a-Day Calendar hub!

Chosen in: 1914 at the latest

Chosen by: Unclear

Wofford College was founded in 1854 and kicked off intercollegiate athletics beginning with football in 1889, their first teams bearing no official nickname.

The first identity Wofford appears to have claimed is the one they still claim today. According to school archivists Phillip Jones and Herbert Hucks, drawings of terriers began appearing in the college’s Bohemian yearbook as early as 1909, with one drawing in the 1912 edition specifically calling the terrier “Our Mascot”. The first time a print source specifically called Wofford’s teams by the “Terriers” nickname was in November 1914, when the Wofford College Journal—a literary magazine that has since been discontinued—did it.

Officially, Wofford’s mascot is a purebred Boston Terrier. They’re represented by a costumed terrier named Boss and they used to also be represented by a live terrier named Blitz, but as far as I can tell, the latter practice was discontinued in 2019.

Subscribe now

Previous page: Wisconsin Badgers

Next page: Wright State Raiders

Find every page at the Name-a-Day Calendar hub!

Chosen in: 1889

Chosen by: It came naturally as an extension of the state’s nickname

The University of Wisconsin was founded in 1848, when Wisconsin earned statehood (the “–Madison” was tacked onto the end in 1971). Their football team kicked off intercollegiate athletics at the school in 1889, but the “Badgers” nickname predates both of these dates.

Southwestern Wisconsin is part of the lead-rich Driftless Area. Local Native Americans had been mining lead here for centuries. Then the white colonizers stepped in and started claiming that resource for themselves. In the early to mid-1800s, many white miners began digging makeshift dens near their mines. These dens served as temporary homes, as they were conveniently located and significantly easier to “build” than regular houses.

Some found this strange and compared these den-living miners to badgers: small, den-living animals native to the state.1 Despite this being meant as an insult, the miners themselves usually took it as a point of pride. Eventually, association with the badger became popular statewide, to the point that Wisconsin was already calling itself The Badger State not long after they achieved statehood.

When that 1889 Wisconsin football team took the field, their mascot was a live badger. Whether the team itself was immediately called the Badgers is somewhat unclear, but the nickname already referred to the state’s residents and was consistently being used in print within a decade, so I’d say it was probably used colloquially at least a little from the very beginning.

The “Badgers” nickname has remained to the present day and the badger was named the official state animal in 1957. The live badger mascot was quickly retired on account of being too ferocious, but that’s probably for the best, as Wisconsin today has one of the most recognizable costumed mascots in sports: Bucky Badger.

Subscribe now

Previous page: Winthrop Eagles

Next page: Wofford Terriers

Find every page at the Name-a-Day Calendar hub!

Chosen in: 1975

Chosen by: The Student Government Association after a schoolwide poll

Today’s Winthrop University was founded as a normal school for white women in 1886. It remained a women’s school until 1974, which is about the same time Title IX made large-scale women’s sports a reality, so our intercollegiate athletics story doesn’t begin until after the school became coeducational.

When the school was women-only, each class was represented by its own mascot, but as intercollegiate sports became a real possibility at Winthrop, the Student Government Association (SGA) thought it better to have one catch-all mascot to represent the entire school. In 1975, they polled the student body and the school’s faculty and staff, and this poll resulted in three finalists: Cardinals, Eagles, and Sandlappers.1 From these options, the SGA chose “Eagles”. We don’t know who originally suggested this mascot or why, but it’s stuck ever since.

Winthrop’s mascot is a majestic costumed eagle named Big Stuff.

Subscribe now

Previous page: William & Mary Tribe

Next page: Wisconsin Badgers

Find every page at the Name-a-Day Calendar hub!

Chosen in: 1978

Chosen by: University administration

The College of William & Mary didn’t begin playing modern intercollegiate sports until 200 years after it was founded, so…1893. Despite the college seal being green and gold, the uniforms for their first football teams were orange and white, so the teams were called the Orange and White. Then, in 1909, the team managers got tired of cleaning a bunch of muddy white jerseys all the time, so they switched to orange and black and called themselves the Orange and Black.

Beginning in 1916, print sources referred to William & Mary’s teams as the Indians. It’s unclear who exactly coined this nickname or why, but the school notes that the most likely originator was Flat Hat student newspaper writer William Durham Harris and that “it’s more than safe to assume that the name had something to do with W&M’s history with Native Americans through the College’s [Brafferton] ‘Indian School’”. That second point seems just a tad revisionist to me, but y’know. It’s at least an explanation.

The “Tribe” nickname wouldn’t become official for several decades but it actually dates back all the way to 1924, when it appeared in the Colonial Echo yearbook. Writers often used various unofficial Native American-based nicknames to refer to their “Indians”, including “Braves”, “Warriors”, and, yes, “Tribe”. This is also when the sports teams finally began wearing the green and gold color scheme used by the rest of the institution.

While their teams were nicknamed the Indians, William & Mary’s mascot history consisted of almost anything but: they had dogs, an alligator, and even human children serve as their mascot around this time. By the late 1930s, they finally settled on a pony being ridden by someone in Native American garb.

As far as Native American misrepresentation by schools claiming the “Indians” nickname goes, William & Mary was less egregious than most. The pony mascot was pretty tame, and though they used a caricaturish Native American logo beginning in the ‘60s, it was scrapped only a decade later as William & Mary drifted away from the “Indians” branding entirely.

Beginning in 1974, the college gradually moved to using a logo that featured only the letters “WM” and two feathers, a process that was completed in 1978. Around the same time, William & Mary began to prefer the term “Tribe” over “Indians”, with the latter being completely eliminated by the early 1980s.

This movement was enough to spare William & Mary from the NCAA’s 2005 ruling against unsanctioned Native American nicknames, imagery, and mascots…mostly. They did rule that W&M had to nix the feathers in their logo, and that’s how we got the “W&M” logo the school still uses today. But the “Tribe” nickname could stay, which it has to the present day.

Because William & Mary is forbidden from representing their teams with a Native American mascot, they had to put actual effort into selecting a new mascot, but that effort did not go unrewarded. In 2010, they introduced a costumed griffin—a mythological cross between a lion and an eagle—so chosen because the coat of arms of King William and Queen Mary featured several lions and because the eagle is a prominent symbol of the United States. In 2018, they named the griffin Reveley after outgoing college president Taylor Reveley.

Personally, as someone who’s researched this history for over 350 different schools, William & Mary’s mascot is probably in the top five in creativity, to say nothing about how cool griffins are in general. If it was up to me, their teams would also be nicknamed the Griffins, but that doesn’t seem imminent. Ah well. A guy can dream.

Subscribe now

Previous page: Wichita State Shockers

Next page: Winthrop Eagles

Find every page at the Name-a-Day Calendar hub!

Chosen in: 1904

Chosen by: Football manager R.J. Kirk

Today’s Wichita State University was founded in 1895 as Fairmount College. They began playing intercollegiate sports in 1897, when their football team debuted. Their first teams had no official nickname, but that soon changed.

In fall 1904, Fairmount’s football team faced off against the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School, a now-defunct institution less than a mile south of Kansas’ border with what was then the Oklahoma Territory. Before the game, team manager R.J. Kirk drew up a promotional poster, and on that poster he called his team the “Wheat Shockers”. This nickname came on account of Fairmount being a relatively rural institution, their students (including football players) often earning money to pay for their education by harvesting wheat through a process known as “shocking”.

The nickname immediately stuck, though the “Wheat” was quickly dropped and fans called the team the Shockers. Fairmount didn’t immediately officialize the nickname, but that also came within a couple decades.

Fairmount College became the Municipal University of Wichita in 1926 and then Wichita State University in 1964, marking that year as the first time the team was named the Wichita State Shockers. Their mascot is a menacing costumed wheat shock named WuShock. Fear him.

Subscribe now

Previous page: Western Michigan Broncos

Next page: William & Mary Tribe

Find every page at the Name-a-Day Calendar hub!

Chosen in: 1939

Chosen by: Assistant football coach John Gill in a schoolwide contest

The school now known as Western Michigan University was founded in 1903 as Western State Normal School. They began playing intercollegiate sports in 1906 with the debut of their football team. As the southwest Kalamazoo campus was located atop a hill, the school’s first teams were known as the Hilltoppers.

This persisted until 1939, but by then, several other schools had begun to call themselves the Hilltoppers—including another “Western” school in Kentucky—and Western State wanted something more distinct. The school held a contest to select a new nickname and offered $101 to the winner.

Enter John Gill, one of the most influential figures in the history of the university. Gill played three sports at Western State in the early 1920s, then came back to serve as an assistant coach on the football team a few years after he graduated. By the time this nickname contest was held in 1939, he was a legend on campus. And that legend would grow even taller as his suggestion, “Broncos”, was selected as the official nickname of Western State sports.

Gill would go on to become the head coach of the football team from 1942–1952 and then the associate athletics director until his retirement in 1969. He didn’t even keep the $10 contest prize. Western State was in the process of expanding their football stadium at the time, so he donated the money right back to the school’s stadium expansion fund. Gill was inducted to the Mid-American Conference Hall of Fame in 1994.

Western State became the modern Western Michigan University in 1957, and the “Broncos” nickname still lives today, as does Waldo Stadium, the one Gill’s donation helped build. Their current mascot is a costumed bronco named Buster.

Subscribe now

Previous page: Western Kentucky Hilltoppers

Next page: Wichita State Shockers

Find every page at the Name-a-Day Calendar hub!

Chosen in: 1911

Chosen by: It came naturally

The early history of what is now Western Kentucky University is a bit of a mess, but it’s directly relevant to the origin of the “Hilltoppers” nickname, so I’ll try to simplify this as much as possible.

In 1876, the combined Glasgow Normal School and Business College was founded in Glasgow, Kentucky. In 1884 this institution moved to Bowling Green and renamed itself Southern Normal School and Business College. In 1890, Potter College, a private women’s school unaffiliated with Southern, opened on a separate campus elsewhere in Bowling Green, atop a hill overlooking the city center from the northeast.

In 1906, the Kentucky General Assembly authorized a public normal school in Bowling Green, and this new school essentially usurped Southern’s campus and student body, reestablishing itself as Western Kentucky State Normal School. Intercollegiate athletics began at the school in 1908 with the foundation of the football program, its first teams playing under no official nickname.

Around the same time, Potter College’s president became badly ill, leading the school to close permanently in 1909. Western Kentucky immediately purchased their campus, and in 1911, they moved all of their operations to the former Potter Campus, which they still occupy today.

As students marched up the hill on February 4, 1911, hauling tons of school equipment with them, they took pride in reaching the top. They became proud to call themselves “Hilltoppers”. That moniker soon extended to athletics, and the rest is history.

I’m not even gonna try to describe Big Red.

Subscribe now

Previous page: Western Illinois Leathernecks

Next page: Western Michigan Broncos

Find every page at the Name-a-Day Calendar hub!

Chosen in: 1927

Chosen by: Athletics director Ray Hanson

Today’s Western Illinois University was founded as a normal school in 1899. They began playing football in 1903 and basketball (men’s and women’s) in 1904. Their first teams bore no official nickname, but by the 1920s, all teams were known as the Fighting Teachers.

In 1926, the school tabbed Ray “Rock” Hanson as their athletics director and head coach of all major men’s sports. A decade prior, Hanson had enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, where he served through World War I. Marines are often known as “Leathernecks”, owing to an actual leather neckpiece members wore until 1872, the original purpose of which was to protect against swords.

Hanson took many cues from his military service in running the Western Illinois athletics department, and he wanted that to include the “Leathernecks” nickname. In 1927, he asked the Department of the Navy, which houses the Marine Corps, for their blessing in using the nickname for his teams. As a thank-you for his service, they said yes. The men’s teams have been known as the Leathernecks ever since. According to the university, they’re the only non-military-affiliated school in the country to use a military-based athletics nickname.

As for the women’s teams, they were soon reduced to intramural competition only, and they remained that way until the passage of Title IX in 1972. Women’s intercollegiate athletics gradually grew back into a full-scale operation over the remainder of the 1970s, but the university didn’t want to call them the Leathernecks. As a result, they held a contest in 1977 to select a different nickname, soliciting suggestions throughout all of McDonough County. The contest gained more than 100 entries. Women’s athletes and coaches voted for their favorite and the winner was “Westerwinds”. This became the official women’s athletics nickname at Western Illinois until the university reversed course in 2009 and decided to call them the Leathernecks also.

Since 1959, Western Illinois has represented itself with a live bulldog, named Colonel Rock in honor of Ray Hanson. As far as I can tell, bulldogs had no prior association with the word “leatherneck”, but the association is obvious: they’re rough and tough, just like the Marines.

Subscribe now

Previous page: Western Carolina Catamounts

Next page: Western Kentucky Hilltoppers

Find every page at the Name-a-Day Calendar hub!

Chosen in: 1932

Chosen by: A campus-wide contest; selected by athletics director C.C. Poindexter but originator unclear

What is today Western Carolina University began in 1889 as an institution more analogous to a high school than a university. It gradually grew into a normal school and then, in 1925, into a state college.

Intercollegiate athletics came with the debut of the men’s basketball team in 1927, just after the upgrade into a state college. As teacher education was still a large part of the school’s curriculum, their teams were often called the Teachers. But when the football team came along in 1931, head coach and athletics director C.C. Poindexter deemed that nickname unsatisfactory.

In 1932, Poindexter held a campus-wide contest to select a new nickname. The two finalists in this contest were “Mountain Boomers” (a type of small ground squirrel often found roaming the school’s campus) and “Catamounts” (a general term for a few different species of mountain cat, most often the cougar and the puma). Poindexter preferred “Catamounts”, so that was the pick. It’s remained the nickname ever since.

Today, Western Carolina is represented by a costumed catamount named Paws.

Subscribe now

Previous page: West Virginia Mountaineers

Next page: Western Illinois Leathernecks

Find every page at the Name-a-Day Calendar hub!

Chosen in: 1915

Chosen by: Student Fred B. Deem, kinda

West Virginia University was founded in 1867 and began playing modern intercollegiate athletics with the birth of their football team in 1891. Their first teams were usually known as the Snakes (or the “Snakers”), though this appears to have been specific to football. By the time the men’s basketball team debuted in 1903, it had fallen out of use.

The next time West Virginia’s teams adopted a nickname, it stuck for good. In 1915, students Fred B. Deem ‘15, Earl Miller ‘15, and Ed McWhorther ‘16 wrote “Hail West Virginia” to serve as the school fight song, with the lyrics by Deem and the composition by Miller and McWhorther. The second verse of the song, and usually the only verse that’s actually sung, is as follows:

“It’s West Virginia, It’s West Virginia,
The pride of every Mountaineer!
Come on you old grads, join with us young lads!
It’s West Virginia now we cheer!
Now is the time, boys, to make a big noise,
No matter what the people say!
For there is naught to fear; the gang’s all here!
So hail to West Virginia! Hail!”

The word “Mountaineer” in the second line refers to West Virginia’s state nickname: The Mountain State. West Virginia is located entirely in the Appalachian Mountains and has the highest average elevation of any state east of the Mississippi River. In this roundabout way, that state nickname ended up becoming the university’s athletics nickname as well. After the song was published, people started calling West Virginia’s sports teams the Mountaineers and it stuck.

Since 1934, West Virginia has famously been represented by a rifle-wielding, deerhide-wearing student known simply as The Mountaineer.

Subscribe now

Previous page: Weber State Wildcats

Next page: Western Carolina Catamounts

Find every page at the Name-a-Day Calendar hub!

Chosen in: c. 1925

Chosen by: Standard-Examiner sportswriter Al Warden

The school that is now Weber State University was founded as a junior college in 1889 and began playing football in 1902. Their teams were originally called the Weberites if they were called by any nickname at all, which was rare.

At some point in the mid-1920s, when the school was known as Weber College, came a football practice that is today etched into Weber State lore. As the story goes, an unnamed player retorted that star back Wally Morris was playing soft, like a pussycat. Team captain Monk Holliday, standing up for Morris, clapped back at the other player, saying: “he’s no pussycat; he’s a wildcat”. Morris immediately gained the nickname “Wildcat”, by which he was almost exclusively known from that point forward.

Not long afterwards, the media expanded the “Wildcat” nickname to the entire Weber team. According to the university, the first to do this was Al Warden, a sportswriter for the Standard-Examiner, a daily newspaper in Weber State’s hometown of Ogden.1

I couldn’t track down the article in which Warden first did this, but the university claims that he called the players “scrappy as a bunch of Wildcats”. The first time Weber’s yearbook, Acorn, refers to their own teams as the Wildcats is in the 1926 edition, so I’m left to assume that Warden’s article was most likely penned during that school year’s football season in fall 1925.

It didn’t take the community much convincing to adopt the “Wildcats” nickname, as “Weber Wildcats” was alliterative and catchy. College president Aaron Tracy thought the nickname was demeaning and instead wanted his school’s teams to be called the Lions, but the community’s love for “Wildcats” won out. It helped that bobcats are native to the area and lions have been extinct in North America for millennia.

Weber College became Weber State College in 1962, switching to a four-year curriculum two years later. It was upgraded to university status in 1991 and today sports a costumed bobcat mascot named Waldo.

Subscribe now

Previous page: Washington State Cougars

Next page: West Virginia Mountaineers

Find every page at the Name-a-Day Calendar hub!

Chosen in: 1919

Chosen by: Either a sportswriter or a newspaper cartoonist; it’s unclear

The school now known as Washington State University was founded in 1890 and began playing football in 1894. It was originally founded as an agricultural school,1 so its earliest teams were often called the Farmers or the Aggies and sometimes called more informal monikers such as the Hayseeds and the Potato Diggers (the school is only about five miles from the Idaho state line).

In the 1910s, Washington State had a few athletics coaches of Native American descent, most notably John Reinhold “Chief” Bender and William Henry “Lone Star” Dietz.2 During this period, the school’s teams were usually called the Braves, Chiefs, or Indians, though none of the three were anything close to official. This practice ended following the 1917 season, when Dietz left to serve in World War I.

In 1919, seeking a more permanent identity, Washington State ran with the first thing that came their way. Following a 14-0 win at California on October 25, the story goes that sportswriters compared Washington State’s football players to cougars and a cartoonist reportedly sketched a cougar in their honor. None of the sources that make this claim offer any proof to back it up, and I couldn’t independently confirm this happened, so I guess I just have to take their word for it.

On October 28, just three days later, the school officially announced that the cougar would be their new mascot. The Washington State Cougars have roamed the Palouse ever since.

Washington State has cycled through several cougar mascots—some live, some costumed—but they eventually settled on a costumed cougar named Butch T. Cougar.

Subscribe now

Previous page: Washington Huskies

Next page: Weber State Wildcats

Find every page at the Name-a-Day Calendar hub!