Name-a-Day Calendar, September 26: UNLV (Runnin’) Rebels

Page 324 of 365

Chosen in: 1954 (“Runnin’” added in 1974 for men’s basketball)

Chosen by: Students in the school’s infancy (“Runnin’” added by sports information director Dominic Clark)

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Las Vegas wasn’t always the marquee urban area in Nevada. For almost a century, Reno was the largest city in the state (and really the only urban agglomeration of any considerable size, relatively speaking). But Clark County exploded in popularity after World War II and Las Vegas overtook Reno at some point in the 1950s.

Las Vegas (the city) was still 31 years away from being officially founded when what is now the University of Nevada, Reno, was first established in 1874. That school was the only notable institution of higher education in the state for several decades. In 1951, just as Las Vegas was starting to boom, the University of Nevada set up an extension program there using spare space at Las Vegas High School. This institution quickly proved popular and Nevada’s Board of Regents officially designated it the Southern Regional Division of the University of Nevada (Nevada Southern for short) in 1954.

But Nevada Southern didn’t want to be under the University of Nevada’s control. They wanted to rebel against their parent institution and become their own university. Some students started calling themselves “Rebels” and it caught on quickly. The University of Nevada opened a standalone campus for Nevada Southern in 1957 and the nascent school began intercollegiate athletics with men’s basketball in 1958. These teams were immediately known as the Rebels, as that had long since become the preferred school identity.

After a decade of pressure, Nevada Southern gained their independence from the Reno campus in 1964. They renamed themselves Nevada Southern University at that time, then became the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), in 1969.¹

In 1973, Jerry Tarkanian became the head coach of UNLV’s men’s basketball team, and his teams played fast. So fast, in fact, that sports information director Dominic Clark dubbed them the “Runnin’ Rebels”. It stuck and has continued to be the official nickname of their men’s basketball team, and only their men’s basketball team, to this day.

You can probably guess that the “Rebels” nickname has led to some association with the Confederacy, and in fact, the association was immediate. In 1957, Nevada Southern debuted their first mascot Beauregard, a cartoon wolf wearing an explicitly Confederate uniform. The idea was that, since the Reno campus was known as the Wolf Pack, Nevada Southern’s mascot should be a “Southern” wolf. This mascot somehow lasted all the way until 1976 before the Student Senate finally trashed it.

A few years before that, the student body also considered ditching the “Rebels” identity, but a vote on the issue ended nearly 2:1 in favor of keeping it. After six years without a mascot, UNLV introduced Hey Reb!, a vaguely mountain man lookin’ dude whom you almost certainly recognize as the face on their logo for the 30 years that followed.

They even built a statue of him in 2007, but they removed it in 2020 as a part of the nationwide reckoning on anti-BIPOC symbols in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. They then retired the mascot entirely the next year and they have yet to introduce a replacement. They kept the “Rebels” nickname, though: unsurprising given its origins were at most tangentially associated with the Confederacy.²

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1. At which point the original University of Nevada added “, Reno” to differentiate

2. Just don’t bring back the Confederate wolf.