Name-a-Day Calendar, March 2: Idaho Vandals
Page 116 of 365
Chosen in: 1918
Chosen by: The Argonaut sportswriter Harry Lloyd “Jazz” McCarty
The University of Idaho was established in 1889 and first began playing intercollegiate sports just four years later; their football team dates back to 1893. But it was their men’s basketball team, founded in 1905, that eventually gave them their unique “Vandals” nickname.
In 1917 and 1918, the team was coached by the legendary Hec Edmundson, just getting his coaching career off the ground at his alma mater before he’d go on to spend almost three decades at Washington. University sources state that Edmundson’s teams played so hard on defense that at least one sportswriter likened it to “vandalizing” their opponents, though this appears to be conjecture on their part; I could find no usage of this turn of phrase.
The first confirmed use of the “Vandals” nickname came in January 1918. In his preview of the team’s opening game of the 1917-18 season for student newspaper The Argonaut, Harry Lloyd “Jazz” McCarty wrote that “the present gang of Vandals have the best material that has ever carried the ‘I’ into action”. That team turned out to be the best the program had ever seen, winning that game and almost every other en route to a 12-1 record. The nickname stuck and the school newspaper and yearbook continued to use it for the men’s basketball team.
The football team didn’t immediately follow suit, and in fact, many football fans hated the “Vandals” nickname. In the early 1920s, some contingents of the student body attempted to change the nickname (sometimes to a Native American name), but none of the movements ever succeeded. In 1923, the university began calling all of their sports teams the Vandals officially.
The first depiction of the Vandal came in 1924. Students eventually named it Joe Vandal in the early 1950s before a costumed mascot entered the fray in 1956. Brenna Greene did a deep dive into the history of Joe Vandal for KREM in 2020. I highly recommend it.
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