Name-a-Day Calendar, August 28: Texas A&M–Commerce Lions
Page 295 of 365
Chosen in: 1919
Chosen by: Student Roy Owens
East Texas Normal College, originally a private school, first opened in 1889. They began intercollegiate athletics in 1915 with both football and men’s basketball debuting that year. These teams were initially known as the Normalites.
In 1917, the school was acquired by the State of Texas and became the public East Texas State Normal College. The school’s founder and first president, William Leonidas Mayo, stepped down at the same time, but his legacy would live on in a somewhat unusual manner. In 1919, the student body sought a fiercer athletics nickname than “Normalites” and student Roy Owens suggested “Lions” as a play on “Leonidas”. It stuck, and they’ve been the Lions ever since.
East Texas State Normal College would undergo three more name changes over several decades1 before joining the Texas A&M University System in 1996 and taking on the name Texas A&M–Commerce, after the city in which it is located. That year is when we first got the Texas A&M–Commerce Lions.
Texas A&M–Commerce is represented by a costumed lion mascot named Lucky.
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East Texas State Teachers College in 1923, East Texas State College in 1957, and East Texas State University in 1965