Name-a-Day Calendar, January 18: Duke Blue Devils

Page 73 of 365

Chosen in: 1922

Chosen by: William H. Lander and Mike Bradshaw, editors of the Trinity Chronicle student newspaper

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What is now Duke University began as a humble, private boys school in a rural area south of High Point in 1838. It shuffled through a few names before settling on Trinity College in 1859 thanks to some financial support from the Methodist Church. The area around the school was incorporated as the Town of Trinity, after the school, in 1869, only for the school to follow tobacco money and leave for Durham in 1892.¹

Trinity began playing sports just before the move, but they grew into the behemoth they are now once they called Durham home. They didn’t have an official nickname but their uniforms were the same blue and white they are today, so they were usually just called the “Blue and White”. Eventually, this was unacceptable to the Trinity Chronicle student newspaper and they held a contest in September 1921 to choose an official nickname.

Some nicknames entered in the contest were detached from the school’s color scheme (Badgers, Captains, Catamounts, Dreadnaughts, Polar Bears, Royal Blazes) but many, including the Chronicle staff, thought the blue was a distinct part of Trinity’s identity and felt it should remain part of the name (Blue Devils, Blue Eagles, Blue Titans, Blue Warriors). In the end, this contest resulted in no nickname being chosen as nobody involved could form a consensus. “Blue Devils” was one of the frontrunners, but some people were staunchly opposed to it because Trinity was a Christian college and they didn’t want a devil as their mascot.

Of course, the devil has nothing to do with the Blue Devils nickname. It’s an homage to the French army’s Chasseurs Alpins infantry force, nicknamed “les Diables Bleus” (guess what that’s French for). As Duke’s website tells it, during World War I “their unique training and alpine knowledge was counted upon to break the stalemate of trench warfare in … the French Alps”.

It should be no surprise, then, that the Blue Devils also metaphorically broke the stalemate of the Trinity College student body choosing an athletic nickname. Unhappy to be without an official nickname for another year, seniors from the Class of 1923 joined the editors of other student publications, The Archive and The Chanticleer, in telling the Trinity Chronicle staff to just pick a name and get it over with.

So they did. Editor-in-chief William H. Lander and managing editor Mike Bradshaw picked “Blue Devils” and nobody opposed it enough for it to stop. A century later, it’s one of the biggest brand names in sports.

Trinity College would continue taking copious amounts of tobacco money to the point that they’d willingly rename themselves after tobacco magnate Washington Duke in 1924.² And that’s how they became the Duke Blue Devils.

Nearly 100 years later, the Duke men’s basketball team, then ranked #4 in the AP Poll, would lose to their bitter rival North Carolina, then unranked, in the last home game for legendary coach Mike Krzyzewski, who had led them for the past 42 years. The final score was 94-81. Four weeks later, Duke and North Carolina would meet again, this time in the Final Four; it was the first time these two nemeses had ever met in the NCAA Tournament. 8-seed North Carolina would win this game as well, as a dagger three-pointer by Caleb Love with 24.8 seconds to play would sink 2-seed Duke by the final score of 81-77. It was the last game Krzyzewski ever coached.

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1. Wake Forest University did basically the same thing. They were founded north of Raleigh in 1834, then the surrounding area was incorporated as the Town of Wake Forest College in 1880 (the “College” would be removed in 1909). They also followed tobacco money and moved to Winston-Salem in 1956. But Wake Forest University was founded in a forested area of Wake County and their name made sense in geographical context even before the town was incorporated. Now their name’s just nonsensical.

2. The Town of Trinity would lose its charter the same year and, just as quickly as “Trinity” had entered North Carolina’s collective conscience, it was gone. Until 1997, at least, when Trinity would be reincorporated as a city.