Name-a-Day Calendar, August 14: Stanford Cardinal
Page 281 of 365
Chosen in: 1981
Chosen by: University president Donald Kennedy
Leland Stanford Junior University first opened in fall 1891. Soon after the school opened, the student body voted on their school color and chose gold. Another school assembly not long after the vote, apparently unaware of the results, independently decided that the school color would actually be cardinal red.
The confusion over which color would truly represent Stanford was dispelled in March 1892, in the wake of their first football game against rival California. After they won the game 14-10, sportswriters referred to the Stanford team as the Cardinal; the color and the nickname both stuck.
This wasn’t an official nickname. Stanford wouldn’t get one of those until November 25, 1930, when the Executive Committee for the Associated Students unanimously voted to call their teams the Indians. The university notes that it’s not entirely clear how this came to be, but that Native Americans were long seen as a Stanford symbol before this decision, and the vote was more or less a formality.
To Stanford’s credit, they dropped the Native American identity long before it became a nationwide hot button issue. In 1972, a group of 55 Native American students met with Richard Lyman, then the university’s president, to discuss their disgust at their likeness being used as a mascot. These talks became public, prompting the student senate to vote on eliminating the “Indians” identity. The motion passed 18-4 and President Lyman followed their lead.
A couple unsuccessful attempts to reverse this decision followed, first later in 1972 (the student body actually voted to reverse the decision but administration said no) and then in 1975.
That 1975 attempt was part of a vote to determine some identity—any identity—for Stanford. Since eliminating the “Indians” branding, Stanford’s teams had been known as the Cardinals, plural. That nickname and “Indians” were placed alongside Huns, Railroaders, Robber Barons, Sequoias, Spikes, and Trees. No consensus was gained for any of these options and the vote failed.
1978 saw another unsuccessful branding push, this time for the “Griffins”. Despite having the backing of most of the varsity athletes at the university, nothing came of this effort.
Finally, on November 17, 1981, Donald Kennedy, who’d assumed the office of university president the year prior, decided to put an end to this identity crisis. He stated:
“While various other mascots have been suggested and then allowed to wither, the color [cardinal] has continued to serve us well, as it has for 90 years. It is a rich and vivid metaphor for the very pulse of life.”
And with that, the S was knocked off of “Cardinals” and Stanford’s teams were the Cardinal once more, this time likely for good.
As for the mascot, well…there officially isn’t one. The Stanford Tree, despite being practically synonymous with Stanford, is only the mascot of the school marching band and is not technically supposed to represent the university at large.1
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It was actually originally conceived of as a parody of sporting mascots. It has unofficially become the very thing it sought to destroy.
So Cardinals was just a placeholder name that lasted a decade. Huh.
I still don't like the "cardinal" as a name. Better than Indians tho