Name-a-Day Calendar, November 7: Abilene Christian Wildcats
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Chosen in: 1919
Chosen by: The West Texas Club in a fundraising competition
Athletics were a pretty low-key operation in the early days of what was then Abilene Christian College.1 In 1919, two sports clubs on campus — the West Texas Club and The A Club — held a fundraising competition to fix that. The school didn’t have a mascot at the time, so the two clubs decided that the club that brought in the most funding would get to choose it; The A Club wanted “Antelopes” and the West Texas Club wanted “Wildcats”.
The fundraiser brought in $6300 in all,2 with the money going toward a brand new athletics field. Needless to say, the West Texas Club won, so “Wildcats” it was. Good thing, too, otherwise we’d currently have two purple “Antelopes” in the WAC.
Learn more about the history of the Wildcats name and mascot here.
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Well…officially, it was still called Childers Classic Institute (the original name of the school when it was founded in 1906), but it had gone unofficially by “Abilene Christian College” since 1912 before officially adopting that name in 1920.
$108,086 in 2022 dollars
I must admire the grind; 108k to pick your school's mascot