Name-a-Day Calendar, February 16: Gonzaga Bulldogs
Page 102 of 365
Chosen in: 1921
Chosen by: The student body
Gonzaga University is a Jesuit school, so naturally, when they began playing football in 1892, their teams were known as the Jesuits (though this was unofficial and sometimes they were called by their school colors: “Blue and White”). A men’s basketball team, known as the “Spokane Champions”, was formed in 1905 but it didn’t begin playing other schools until years later.
This much, all parties seem to agree on. After that, the official Gonzaga account differs from what others, myself included, have dug up in their research.
Gonzaga claims that all of their teams beginning in the early 1910s were known as the Fighting Irish and says it came from the school’s desire to be the “Notre Dame of the West”. The facts don’t seem to support this; the moniker was only confirmed as being used in one football season (1911) because the team happened to have a lot of Irish Catholic men. The fact that Gonzaga’s first football coach, Dr. Henry Luhn, was a Notre Dame alumnus appears to have been a coincidence.
Then there’s disagreement on how exactly Gonzaga became the Bulldogs. Gonzaga claims that the name came from a sportswriter in San Diego. Their story goes that Gonzaga’s football team played West Virginia in a bowl game there on Christmas Day 1921. They lost the game 24-0, but an unnamed sportswriter evidently wrote in their game story that “Gonzaga fought ferociously like bulldogs”.
Any research into this story shows that it’s so nonsensical, you’d think it was written by ChatGPT. You know who played in the 1921 San Diego East-West Christmas Classic? Not Gonzaga and West Virginia!1 They played in the 1922 edition. You know what the score was? Not 24-0!2 But that game story by the unnamed San Diego sportswriter probably did refer to Gonzaga as the Bulldogs. Because that was already their name.
In early 1921, Gonzaga’s student body announced in the Spokane Chronicle that their teams would henceforth be known as the Bulldogs. This announcement also confirmed that the teams had previously had no official nickname. This was almost a year before Gonzaga claimed the football game in San Diego happened and almost two years before it actually happened.
April 1921 saw the school’s first live bulldog mascot, Teddy Gonzaga. They don’t employ a live bulldog anymore, but they’ve had several throughout the years. The live bulldogs even survived an ill-fated attempt to change the school’s nickname to “Emperors” in the mid-1930s. For more on all of this, I highly recommend this feature on Gonzaga’s mascot history by KREM’s Brenna Greene.
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Centre College destroyed Arizona 38-0.
Gonzaga lost 21-13.