Name-a-Day Calendar, March 24: Lamar Cardinals
Page 138 of 365
Chosen in: 1932
Chosen by: Athletic director John Gray
What is now Lamar University was first established in 1923 as South Park Junior College, so called because it was located in the South Park neighborhood of Beaumont, Texas. The school’s first sports teams were nicknamed the “Brahmas” for reasons that appear to have been lost to time.
In 1932, school administration realized they were serving not just the South Park neighborhood or the city of Beaumont, but also the entire Southeast Texas region, so they sought to change their name to reflect that. They ran a public contest to decide a new name, with contestants submitting both their proposal for the new name and an explanation for the name in 100 words or fewer, and the winner receiving a $100 scholarship.1 As it turned out, 25 people submitted the name that ended up being the winner: Lamar College, named for Mirabeau B. Lamar, the second president of the Republic of Texas and the man widely considered the father of Texas public education.
The switch was made official via board of trustees vote on August 20, 1932, and to further revitalize the school’s branding, athletic director John Gray decided the sports teams should also get a new nickname and new colors. He unilaterally nixed the “Brahmas” branding and adopted the nickname “Cardinals”, changing the school colors from maroon and gray to red and blue in the process.2 It remains unknown why Gray chose this specific nickname or why he decided to abandon the color with which he shared a name.
Lamar has two costumed cardinal mascots: a male bird named Big Red who debuted in 1960 and a female bird named Lu who debuted in 2012. Kim Brent of the Beaumont Enterprise recently interviewed them (with the help of Cardinalese translators) to learn what it’s like being giant birds on a college campus.
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$2,195.91 in 2023 dollars
The school would replace blue with white in 1960 to arrive at the red/white color scheme they still use today.