Name-a-Day Calendar, September 14: UCF Knights

Page 312 of 365

Chosen in: 1970, then again in 2007

Chosen by: Student body vote in 1970; school administration in 2007

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Florida Technological University (Florida Tech) first opened in 1968 as the grand result of a concerted effort by the State of Florida to improve higher education near Cape Canaveral during the Space Race. In an attempt to connect to the surrounding community, the school’s first mascot, now famously, was the Citronaut: a humanoid figure with an orange for a body and the head of an astronaut.

Students despised the Citronaut, but Florida Tech’s first sports teams began play with it as their official mascot; men’s basketball started in 1969-70. A campus nurse countered with Vincent the Vulture, a character drawn by her husband that represented the real-life vultures often found in the area. This gained some support within the student body, but it was never an official mascot in any capacity.

After a year of these two mascots cohabiting the limelight, students finally convinced university president Charles Millican to let them pick their own mascot. The school solicited official suggestions for a new icon, assembled a committee of faculty, staff, and students to sift through them all, and sent a few finalists to a ballot to be voted on by the entire student body. According to the university sources I can pin down, these finalists included, but were not necessarily limited to: Chargers, Knights of Pegasus, Sun Devils, and Thunderbolts.

“Knights of Pegasus”, inspired by the pegasus on the university’s original seal, was the clear winner of this election, but it was shortened almost immediately to the far simpler “Knights”, and Florida Tech’s sports teams became known as the Knights beginning in 1970-71.

Millican retired in 1978 and handed the reins to Trevor Colbourn, who immediately pushed the state to change the school’s name to the University of Central Florida (UCF), which they did in December of that year. The story of the “UCF Knights” begins here, though the school was primarily known as “Central Florida” rather than the three-letter initialism until 2005.

Before that, though, they thought they’d try to spice things up a little. In 1993, citing poor merchandise sales, athletic director Steve Sloan singlehandedly decided to change the school’s nickname to “Golden Knights”--fitting, as the school’s colors were black and gold. It’s unclear whether this succeeded, but it was relatively short-lived either way. University administration officially reverted the change and switched back to “Knights” in 2007.

UCF’s current mascot is a (still golden) Knight named Knightro.

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