Name-a-Day Calendar, October 5: UTEP Miners

Page 333 of 365

Chosen in: 1914

Chosen by: Unclear

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The Texas State School of Mines and Metallurgy was established in El Paso in 1913. A men’s basketball team and a football team both began play in 1914 and both were immediately called the Miners.

University sources themselves are unclear of why this came to be or who pushed for it, but I can confirm that local newspapers were consistently calling the school’s teams the Miners in 1914. The most obvious speculative reason for this moniker lies in the school’s own name.

Early on, some sources also referred to these teams as the Muckers or the Ore Diggers, playing off the established “Miners” nickname, but neither of these were permanent or official. “Miners” always has been, and it’s remained as such for over a century, even as the school itself has changed its identity several times and ultimately moved away from “Mines”: University of Texas Department of Mines and Metallurgy in 1918, Texas College of Mines and Metallurgy in 1921, Texas Western College in 1948, and the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) in 1966.

UTEP has had many mascots throughout their history. Their current mascot is a costumed miner named Paydirt Pete.

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