Name-a-Day Calendar, July 14: Saint Mary’s Gaels
Page 250 of 365
Chosen in: c. 1929
Chosen by: Either legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice or San Francisco Call sportswriter Pat Frayne
Saint Mary’s College of California was founded in 1863 and began playing baseball in the late 1870s, their first teams known as the Phoenix. A football team followed in 1892, originally known as the Saints. It’s this football team that eventually gave Saint Mary’s the “Gaels” nickname we know today, though its origin is somewhat debated.
The nickname stems from the glory days of Saint Mary’s football in the late 1920s under College Football Hall of Fame coach Slip Madigan. At the time, a large portion of the school’s football roster was Irish, so sportswriters dubbed them the Gaels or even the “Galloping Gaels”. Sources differ on whether this term originally came from legendary national sportswriter Grantland Rice or from local San Francisco Call1 sportswriter Pat Frayne; in either case, Coach Madigan embraced the nickname, and it only grew from there.
The football team disbanded in 2003, but the nickname still lives on for all of the other sports programs at Saint Mary’s, including its national powerhouse men’s basketball team. They’re represented by a costumed Gael named Gideon.
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After several mergers, acquisitions, and rebrands, this paper published its final issue in 1965.