Name-a-Day Calendar, May 31: Northern Illinois Huskies
Page 206 of 365
Chosen in: 1940
Chosen by: Athletic director Chick Evans with three members of the Varsity Club
The Northern Illinois State Normal School was established in 1895 and began playing football just two years later. Its first teams were called the Profs (short for “professors”) on account of its teacher education background. The nickname “Northerners” was also used, though sparingly.
Around 1920, print sources began calling all Northern Illinois teams the Cardinals because they wore red jerseys. Then, in 1924, a 23-year-old George “Chick” Evans became the school’s athletic director and coach of all major sports. He was so beloved that by the end of the decade all of Northern Illinois’ teams were regularly called the “Evansmen”.
In 1940, thinking it sounded odd to nickname a team after himself and wishing for something that packed more of a punch, Evans formed a committee that included himself and three members of the school’s Varsity Club—Walter Lorimer, Harold Taxman, and Harry Telman—to imagine a new nickname. And the moniker they chose, announced in the January 25, 1940, edition of the Northern Illinois student newspaper, was “Huskies”.
The newspaper article’s only given explanation for the “Huskies” nickname is that “it is particularly apt as in regard to N. I.’s varsity teams”. Sure, I guess.
Northern Illinois has since cycled through numerous husky mascots, live and costumed. The university’s current mascot, introduced just this January, is a live Siberian Husky named Mission III.
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So... he named the team after himself, and then for a new name picked Huskies, and the reason was “it is particularly apt as in regard to N. I.’s varsity teams”
lmao
I still want them to join the OVC tho (so we can have NIU, WIU, EIU, and SIU(E))