Name-a-Day Calendar, March 28: Lipscomb Bisons
Page 142 of 365
Chosen in: 1932
Chosen by: Head basketball coach Robert Alexander
To my knowledge, David Lipscomb College1 began playing sports in the mid- to late 1920s, their first teams unofficially called the Crusaders.
The men’s basketball team began play in 1926, but intercollegiate competition wouldn’t come until 1931. In 1932, the athletics department figured the team should probably have a consistent uniform, so head basketball coach Robert Alexander and team captain Jack Draper headed to a local apparel store.
Draper saw a jacket with a buffalo on it and suggested to Alexander that they purchase it for the team, asserting that they could also nickname the team the Thundering Herd. Alexander liked the jacket, but he countered with his own nickname suggestion: “Bisons”. The two polled the rest of the team on which moniker they preferred and “Bisons” came out ahead. From then on, all sports teams became known as the Bisons.
Lipscomb is often mocked for its use of the uncommon plural “Bisons” rather than the more widely accepted “Bison”, though they’re far from the only team to have adopted this nickname.2 But ask most people associated with the university and they’ll tell you it’s perfectly fine.
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Became Lipscomb University in 1988
I will take this as bad luck, given Vandy Baseball plays them today.
If we lose? Your fault. If we win? Because we played well.
Also, I think that you screwed up a hyperlink, (The "remember Buffalo?" footnote link leads to the Lipscomb guy ranting randomly about how the Bisons are a good name that is definitely right)
Anyway, nice cool nickname story about how Lipscomb is the worst Nashville school. They go from the Crusaders (problematic because the Crusaders were not nice people) to the Bisons (just plain wrong)