Name-a-Day Calendar, October 6: UTRGV Vaqueros

Page 334 of 365

Chosen in: 2014 (began play in 2015)

Chosen by: University president Guy Bailey after a long, confusing process that nobody enjoyed

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The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) officially opened in 2015 as the result of a merger between the University of Texas Pan American (UTPA) in Edinburg and the University of Texas at Brownsville (UTB).

UTPA had been represented by a “bronc” mascot since not long after their foundation in 1927. Their sports teams had been known as the Broncs since they first began play; as far as I can tell, this came with the formation of their men’s basketball team in 1952. At the time of the merger, UTPA had been playing at the NCAA Division I (or equivalent) level since 1968.

UTB was originally founded by UTPA in 1973 via a partnership with Texas Southmost College (TSC), a two-year school in Brownsville that had operated since 1926. TSC’s early sporting history is hard to pin down, but they had sponsored intercollegiate teams nicknamed the Scorpions for some time before UTB essentially usurped their athletics department in 2006. The teams inherited the “Scorpions” nickname and continued to use it until 2012 before abandoning it and playing without a nickname for 2012-13. For the final two years before the merger, they called themselves the Ocelots. UTB/TSC never played at the Division I level, competing in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) prior to the merger.

Given the above, it should be pretty easy to understand why the UTPA community became upset in 2013 when university leaders announced that a mascot change would accompany the merger and that this mascot change was entirely UTB’s idea. UTPA, being the larger and older university, wanted to keep their mascot Bucky the Bronc and the accompanying nickname, but UTB insisted that that wouldn’t be fair and pushed for an identity that was new to both schools. That UTB had to that point established almost no consistent identity outside of those pilfered from other schools was apparently ignored in these discussions.

To decide on a new identity, the administrators of the yet-to-open UTRGV enlisted a committee of 30 students (15 from UTPA and 15 from UTB) to discuss possibilities and deliver a list of 10 finalists. Those finalists, announced in August 2014: Aztecs, Barracudas, Bears, Bull Snakes, Foxes, Mockingbirds, Phoenix, Red Wolves, Sharks, and Tortoises.

Logically, UTRGV received this list and then put out a poll in which UTPA and UTB students could vote among those finalists. Except no, they didn’t. Instead, the UTPA community made a stink about how all of the suggestions were crap (mostly because they weren’t “Broncs”), so UTRGV scrapped the committee’s list and hastily slapped together their own: Green Jays, Phoenix, Storm, and Vaqueros.

Apparently unconvinced by their own ability to select a nickname, UTRGV also added a “none of the above” option when they published the poll. You’d think this would be a risky move given that most of UTPA was still noticeably upset at having to get rid of their “Broncs” identity. If they wanted to cause problems on purpose, they could simply flood the ballot box with “none of the above votes”, and…that’s exactly what they did. “None of the above” won a 45% plurality of the vote, with “Phoenix” finishing second at 21% and “Vaqueros” third at 14%.

This wasn’t working, clearly. The UTRGV administration was just going to have to step in and select an identity for their school. University president Guy Bailey looked at the results, saw that “Phoenix” was the highest vote-getter that wasn’t “none of the above”, noted that it was also the only nickname to appear on both the student committee’s list and the administration’s list, and decided to call his school’s teams the Phoenix.

Lol just kidding.

He picked “Vaqueros”! For…some reason! And nobody liked this. Most of the students who selected “none of the above” were upset that the university was seriously going through with eliminating the “Broncs” identity. Those who actually picked from the list were upset because the wide majority of them did not vote for “Vaqueros”.

Making matters worse, a group of students immediately got on Bailey’s case because the nickname could be considered both racist and sexist in certain contexts. In case you’re unfamiliar, a vaquero is basically a Spanish or Mexican cowboy: a horse-mounted cattle herder. The student group against this nickname argued that it was bound to lead to insensitive portrayals of Hispanic people, a population that accounts for approximately 90% of the UTRGV student body. They also argued that a male-gendered nickname was not inclusive enough for a university that also sponsored women’s sports. It’s up for debate whether these arguments came from intellectually honest apprehension or were thinly veiled concern trolling borne of a stubborn refusal to say goodbye to the Broncs, but the arguments themselves seem valid either way.

It’s reasonable to ask why UTRGV included “Vaqueros” on their ballot in the first place, especially given that they selected it despite it not “winning” the vote in any sense of the word. According to them, the inspiration came from UTPA’s Studio Art program. The program included a sculpting class and the vaquero was a popular subject for sculptors in the class. Bailey would also later point to the vaquero’s cultural and historical relevance to the Rio Grande Valley.

Still, when you’ve just proven that almost nobody in your community actually wants this nickname, it’s probably not a good idea to outright ignore their input and push it through to the Board of Regents. So that’s exactly what Bailey did in November 2014. Petitions and protests followed to no avail. UTRGV has played as the Vaqueros for the entirety of its short life.

A mascot wouldn’t accompany the nickname until 2019, when the university introduced The Vaquero.

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