Name-a-Day Calendar, February 28: Houston Cougars
Page 114 of 365
Chosen in: 1927 unofficially; 1946 officially
Chosen by: Physical education instructor John R. Bender
Houston Junior College was established in 1927.1 Early in their history, they had no intercollegiate athletics, but they did have a volunteer football team, and someone had to coach it. That someone would be John R. Bender, a retired college sports coach who’d coached several schools (including Saint Louis, Washington State, Kansas State, and Tennessee) in football, men’s basketball, and baseball from 1905 through 1921.
Bender came up with the nickname for his team more or less on the spot: he called them the Cougars in memory of his days at Washington State, who had officially nicknamed themselves the Cougars in the years since he’d left. Given they were a volunteer football team, it’s anyone’s guess why he didn’t want to pay homage to a different former employer and call his team the Volunteers, but what’s done is done.
In 1928, following Bender’s lead, the newly established student newspaper named themselves The Cougar. By then, it was all but official, with the “all but” being stripped in 1946 when the school began intercollegiate athletics and named the cougar its official mascot.
Since then, Houston has seen several live cougar mascots represent their spirit, most of whom have been named Shasta. The current mascots, Shasta VII and Louie, were rescued as wild orphan cubs in Washington state and flown to Houston in late 2022. They now reside at the Houston Zoo.
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The school became a four-year institution and renamed itself the University of Houston in 1934.