Name-a-Day Calendar, May 30: Northern Colorado Bears
Page 205 of 365
Chosen in: 1923
Chosen by: “Athletic director” George Cooper
The school we now know as the University of Northern Colorado was founded in 1889 as the State Normal School of Colorado, so when it began playing football in 1893, its teams were known as the Teachers.
The school switched to the “Bears” nickname in 1923, but to understand why, we have to jump back to 1914.
Alumnus Andrew Thompson, who had since gone on to become a superintendent in southeastern Alaska, gifted his alma mater a large totem pole. A brown bear sat atop this totem pole, earning the pole the nickname “Totem Teddy”. Totem Teddy was displayed prominently on campus for several decades.
Eight years later, George Cooper became the school’s head of athletics, taking over the school’s football, baseball, and men’s basketball programs. After one season at the helm, he decided that “Teachers [was] an effeminate title” and switched it up. He renamed his teams the Bears, taking inspiration from Totem Teddy.
The irony of Cooper’s action is that the bear sitting atop Totem Teddy is a female according to the totem’s original story. The totem, of course, did not originally belong to Andrew Thompson (a white man), and it’s not clear how he got it in the first place. It belonged to the Tlingit people in the small town of Angoon, Alaska, who were unaware of its whereabouts for over a century and had long since assumed it may have been lost forever.
Coincidentally, another Northern Colorado alumnus who happened to settle down in southeastern Alaska is the reason the totem was eventually returned to its rightful owners. In 2002, Peter Corey of Sitka saw a photograph of the totem dated 1890 and recognized it as Totem Teddy. He alerted the Tlingit people, they confirmed it was their totem, and Northern Colorado returned it to them in 2004.
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