Name-a-Day Calendar, July 18: San Diego Toreros
Page 254 of 365
Chosen in: 1961
Chosen by: We don’t actually know (but probably school administration)
The University of San Diego technically began as two separate schools (the San Diego College for Women and the men’s San Diego University) that were chartered at the same time in 1949. The men’s school opened in 1954 and began playing sports in 1955, their teams known as the Pioneers.
In 1961, the school unceremoniously changed their athletics nickname to “Toreros”, the Spanish word for “bullfighters”. As the school was not regularly publishing a student newspaper at this time, and the 1962 edition of the yearbook for the men’s college is missing from the university archives, it is unclear how exactly this nickname came to be. All I can do is speculate why the school has embraced it.
The university was originally chartered by the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego, whose first churches in the area were some of the original California Missions, constructed in the style of the Spanish Renaissance. The Diocese was proud of this part of their heritage and constructed the university in the same style and—in my estimation—later also embraced a traditional Spanish nickname for their sports teams. Again, that’s all conjecture.
In any case, the women’s and men’s colleges merged in 1972, and San Diego is currently represented by a costumed torero mascot named Diego Torero.
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