Name-a-Day Calendar, September 29: UT Arlington Mavericks

Page 327 of 365

Chosen in: 1971

Chosen by: Student body vote after tons of controversy

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This one’s a doozy. Prepare yourself.

The origins of what is now the University of Texas at Arlington (UT Arlington) date all the way back to 1895, but our story begins in 1917. After three separate failed attempts by three different groups to host a private military school on the campus, lawyer Vincent Woodbury Grubb recognized its potential for more general higher education and successfully pushed the state legislature to place a public junior college there. The school, named Grubb’s Vocational School in his honor, was originally a branch of Texas A&M.

Intercollegiate men’s basketball dates back to that first season as a public school. Also in Grubb’s honor, the first mascot (and team nickname) was the “Grubbworm”. This only lasted until 1921, when an editorial in The Shorthorn student newspaper successfully convinced the community to get behind “Hornets” instead. This era was even briefer, as the school changed its name to North Texas Agricultural College in 1923 and resultantly called their teams the Junior Aggies.

Another school identity shift to Arlington State College in 1949 begat another nickname change, this time to “Blue Riders” on account of the blue jerseys the team wore. College president Ernest H. Hereford thought that nickname was boring, so he immediately led a campaign to switch to “Rebels”. He left the final decision in the hands of the student body, but they voted to make the switch and it took effect in 1951.

When most people hear the word “Rebels”, they think of the Confederate Army,¹ and yep, that seems to be exactly what they were going for. Confederate imagery immediately flooded school events, sporting and otherwise. Gross!

It’s important to note that Arlington State hadn’t yet racially integrated at this point. That came in 1962 under president Jack Woolf, at which point calls to eliminate the obviously racist branding grew significantly louder. Woolf didn’t really take them seriously, even after the controversy was given even more press during the school’s acquisition by the University of Texas system in 1965.

In 1969, two years after the school finally changed its name to UT Arlington, Woolf stepped down in favor of Frank Harrison, who actually seemed open to eliminating the Rebels, but he, like Hereford before him, left the final decision to the students. Some traction came from this, but it wasn’t enough to make actual change. In 1970, students voted on what might be a replacement identity if they were to discard “Rebels”, and the winner of that vote was “Mavericks”, but then they voted directly on whether “Mavericks” should actually replace “Rebels” and the result was that it shouldn’t.

The next year, the University of Texas System Board of Regents went over everyone’s head and voted 7-2 to make UT Arlington get rid of “Rebels”, with chancellor Charles LeMaistre stating that the brand (and all of the surrounding controversy) had “adversely affected the morale” at UT Arlington.

That decision came down in January 1971 and the Board of Regents gave the school until June to comply. Consequently, a student body vote was held in April. The choices given to students were Hawks, Mavericks, Rangers, and Toros, and the vote was pretty close: Mavericks 460, Toros 408, Rangers 370, Hawks 361. The school sent it to a runoff so they could be sure they were selecting the most popular nickname. In that runoff, “Mavericks” defeated “Toros” by a count of 1863 to 1431, officially making it the new identity of UT Arlington.

Okay, great! Problem solved.

Then the NBA awarded an expansion team to Dallas, which began play in 1980 and was called…the Mavericks. This upset the community affiliated with UT Arlington, which sits just 18 miles west of Dallas. UT Arlington considered suing for trademark infringement but they just didn’t think they had the resources to stand up to a professional sports league, so they let themselves get stepped on. They also considered switching nicknames again, but with the whole “Rebels” thing less than a decade in the rear-view mirror, they decided it wasn’t worth the effort. UT Arlington and the Dallas NBA team have coexisted as the Mavericks for 43 years. The Metroplex is the only metro area in the United States in which a professional sports franchise and a Division I athletics department share the same nickname.

Today, the Mavericks have two mascots: a superhero type dude named MavsMan and a costumed horse named Champ.

Hold on, I’m now being told those are the mascots for the Dallas Mavericks. Sorry. UT Arlington is represented by a costumed horse named Blaze. Here he is doling out some seasonally appropriate advice.

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1. Excluding other sports team nicknames, other acceptable answers are the James Dean film Rebel Without a Cause and the Disney Channel Original Movie Radio Rebel. The Madonna album Rebel Heart is eliminated on account of being her worst studio album.