Name-a-Day Calendar, January 14: DePaul Blue Demons
Page 69 of 365
Chosen in: 1925
Chosen by: The student body
A Catholic university using demonic imagery for its athletic branding? It’s more likely than you think! Here’s how.
In 1898, Vincentian priests founded St. Vincent’s College and a corresponding prep school, DePaul Academy. In 1907, the college rebranded as DePaul University. Their sports teams, nameless at the time, began wearing the letter D on their chests after the switch, leading students and fans to start calling them the “D-Men”.
It quickly became hard to differentiate between the prep school teams and the university teams, as they now both shared the same school name, but school admins had an idea: because the school colors were red and blue, they’d give one team a red D and one a blue D. They ended up assigning red to the prep school and blue to the university and, as a result, fans called the teams the “Red D-Men” and the “Blue D-Men”.
Over time, the university “D-Men” became the “Demons”, for no other reason than that it was phonetically identical and was an actual, tangible mascot. In 1925, the student body made it official: they were the DePaul Blue Demons. I wonder what it’s like in the alternate universe where the school gave red to the university and DePaul became the Red Demons.1
DePaul has a costumed blue demon mascot, DIBS (Demon In a Blue Suit), I guess because they couldn’t find any live ones.
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I’m reminded of Abed’s (Danny Pudi) recurring line in the Community episode “Remedial Chaos Theory”: “I wonder what happened in all those other timelines.” While Pudi and DePaul are both from Chicago, Pudi graduated from one of their Big East rivals: Marquette. “Remedial Chaos Theory” is my favorite episode of any sitcom, for the record.