Name-a-Day Calendar, February 12: Georgia Bulldogs
Page 98 of 365
Chosen in: 1920, officially
Chosen by: Probably Atlanta Journal sportswriter Morgan Blake
There are two separate accounts of how Georgia became the Bulldogs. The first goes all the way back to the school’s founding as the second oldest public university in the United States. The first president of the university, Abraham Baldwin, was a graduate of Yale and crafted the school’s historic North Campus with the Ivy League in mind. The theory is that this relationship extended to the eventual naming of the school sports teams; Yale is the Bulldogs, so Georgia took the same nickname in their honor.
The second theory, and the one that more directly translates to Georgia’s sports teams, is that sportswriters birthed it. Georgia’s first sports teams didn’t have an official mascot; they were usually just called by the school colors, “Red and Black”. In 1920, Herman Stegeman became the head coach of the football team and dubbed his team the Wildcats, but many people didn’t like this.
About midway through the season, Atlanta Journal sportswriter Morgan Blake wrote an editorial in which he argued that the name should immediately be retired in favor of “Bulldogs”. Ironically (at least if you’re familiar with the landscape of college sports nicknames today), Blake’s primary argument was that “Bulldogs” was original and “Wildcats” wasn’t. Blake noted that two other schools in the South (Kentucky and Davidson) already used “Wildcats”, but no one in the area used “Bulldogs”. He added that “there is a certain dignity about a bulldog as well as ferocity”.
At least one other sportswriter agreed with him. The next week, when Georgia’s football team traveled up to Charlottesville to play Virginia to a scoreless tie, Atlanta Constitution sportswriter Cliff Wheatley referred to the team almost exclusively as the Bulldogs in his game recap. After that, the dog was out of the bag. The name stuck.
Georgia’s live bulldog mascot, Uga, might be the most well known mascot in all of college sports.
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