Name-a-Day Calendar, October 25: Western Michigan Broncos
Page 353 of 365
Chosen in: 1939
Chosen by: Assistant football coach John Gill in a schoolwide contest
The school now known as Western Michigan University was founded in 1903 as Western State Normal School. They began playing intercollegiate sports in 1906 with the debut of their football team. As the southwest Kalamazoo campus was located atop a hill, the school’s first teams were known as the Hilltoppers.
This persisted until 1939, but by then, several other schools had begun to call themselves the Hilltoppers—including another “Western” school in Kentucky—and Western State wanted something more distinct. The school held a contest to select a new nickname and offered $101 to the winner.
Enter John Gill, one of the most influential figures in the history of the university. Gill played three sports at Western State in the early 1920s, then came back to serve as an assistant coach on the football team a few years after he graduated. By the time this nickname contest was held in 1939, he was a legend on campus. And that legend would grow even taller as his suggestion, “Broncos”, was selected as the official nickname of Western State sports.
Gill would go on to become the head coach of the football team from 1942–1952 and then the associate athletics director until his retirement in 1969. He didn’t even keep the $10 contest prize. Western State was in the process of expanding their football stadium at the time, so he donated the money right back to the school’s stadium expansion fund. Gill was inducted to the Mid-American Conference Hall of Fame in 1994.
Western State became the modern Western Michigan University in 1957, and the “Broncos” nickname still lives today, as does Waldo Stadium, the one Gill’s donation helped build. Their current mascot is a costumed bronco named Buster.
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