Name-a-Day Calendar, June 7: Ohio Bobcats
Page 213 of 365
Chosen in: 1925
Chosen by: Alumnus Hal H. Rowland via a campus-wide contest
Ohio University were slackers and didn’t start playing intercollegiate sports until 90 years after they were founded. This is more excusable when you learn that the school was established in 1804.
The very first football teams were known as the Blue and White, Ohio’s colors at the time, but in 1896, the colors changed to Green and White and so did the unofficial nickname.
In 1925, the university’s athletic board wanted a real nickname, so they started a campus-wide contest to select one and offered a $101 prize to the winning entrant. As the university tells it, “many animal nicknames were proposed but after great debate, the Bobcat won for its reputation as a sly, wily, scrappy animal”. The athletic board and university president E.B. Bryan officially adopted the “Bobcats” nickname on December 7, 1925, giving the prize to its entrant: alumnus Hal H. Rowland.
The Bobcats wouldn’t get a mascot until 1960, but they’ve cycled through several since then. The first mascot was a costumed bobcat, and a few different iterations of the costume would come and go before Ohio landed on its current suit in 2006, at which point they also named the bobcat Rufus. Ohio has also been represented by two live bobcats.
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