Name-a-Day Calendar, April 23: Michigan State Spartans
Page 168 of 365
Chosen in: 1926
Chosen by: Stephen Scofes via Lansing State Journal sports editor George Alderton
In 1855, the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan was founded on land that would later be incorporated as East Lansing. The college began playing sports late in the 19th century1 and, owing to their agricultural teachings, their teams were called the Aggies.
Over the next few decades, the school’s curriculum gradually expanded, and by 1925, it no longer made sense to call them purely an ag school, so they changed their name to Michigan State College of Agriculture and Applied Science. In turn with this, they sought to update their athletic branding, so they held a public contest to select a new nickname. In March 1926, the school judged the contest finalists — Bearcats, Bob Cats, Fawns, Pioneers, Staters, and Statesmen — and decided that their teams would be called the Staters. The Michigan Staters…or maybe the Michigan State Staters; it’s not clear.
This lack of clarity did not bode well for the nickname’s usage in print sources. Lansing State Journal sports editor George Alderton outright refused to allow it in his paper. Sometime that spring, he went to one of his regular breakfast spots in Lansing and got to rambling about this issue with his friend Stephen Scofes, who owned the joint. Alderton was upset at the nickname the school had chosen, while Scofes lamented that his entry didn’t win the contest. Scofes, of Greek descent, had suggested the teams be called the Spartans.
Alderton then got in touch with the university to see if they still had the contest entries; they did, and he found the “Spartans” entry. At the time, Michigan State’s baseball team was on a tour in the South and their catcher Perry Fremont was relaying game stories to Alderton for publication in the Lansing State Journal. In these stories, Alderton took to calling the Michigan State squad the “Sportans” until someone corrected him and told him it was spelled with two A’s.
Nobody fervently opposed this development, so on April 13, 1926, without crediting Scofes, Alderton changed the course of Michigan State history by officially introducing the Spartans nickname in the Lansing State Journal.
“Out of a clear sky a nick name has descended upon the Michigan State college athletic camp. ‘Spartans’ is the sobriquet that will … be attached the wearer of the Green and White.”
A couple days later, Lansing Capitol News sportswriter Dale Stafford joined their rival paper in using the Spartans moniker and that was pretty much that.
Today, Michigan State’s mascot Sparty is among the most recognizable in the country.
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Baseball in 1884, football in 1896, men’s basketball in 1898