1. llinois Fighting Illini
The term Fighting Illini first appeared in a January 29, 1911, newspaper article describing the basketball team's effort during a game versus Purdue. By March 3, 1911, the athletic teams appeared to have earned the Fighting Illini nickname as a formal appellation evidenced in a newspaper report
2. Indiana Hoosiers
They were called "Hoosier's men" and eventually all Indianans were called Hoosiers. A theory attributed to Gov. Joseph Wright derived Hoosier from an Indian word for corn, "hoosa." Indiana flatboatmen taking corn or maize to New Orleans came to be known as "hoosa men" or Hoosiers
3. Iowa Hawkeyes
“The University of Iowa borrowed its athletic nickname from the state of Iowa many years ago. The name Hawkeye was originally applied to a hero in a fictional novel, The Last of the Mohicans, written by James Fenimore Cooper. Cooper had the Delaware Indians bestow the name on a white scout who lived and hunted with them.
In 1838, 12 years after the book was published, people in the territory of Iowa acquired the nickname, chiefly through the efforts of Judge David Rorer of Burlington and James G. Edwards of Fort Madison. Edwards, editor of the Fort Madison Patriot, moved his newspaper to Burlington in 1843 and renamed it the Burlington Hawkeye. The two men continued their campaign to popularize the name and were rewarded when territorial officials gave it their formal approval.
The Hawkeye nickname gained a tangible symbol in 1948 when a cartoon character, later to be named Herky the Hawk, was hatched. The creator was Richard Spencer III, an instructor of journalism. The impish hawk was an immediate hit and he acquired a name through a statewide contest staged by the UI Athletic Department. John Franklin, a Belle Plaine alumnus, was the man who suggested Herky.
4. Maryland Terrapins
The nickname was coined in 1932 by Harry C. "Curley" Byrd, then the school's football coach and later the school's president. Previously, Maryland teams were known as the "Old Liners"—a reference to the state's nickname, "The Old Line State".
However, the school newspaper, The Diamondback, wanted a better nickname. Byrd thought "Terrapins" was a good choice because of the diamondback terrapins native to the Chesapeake Bay region.
5. Michigan Wolverines
Some people believe that Ohioans gave Michigan the nickname around 1835 during a dispute over the Toledo strip, a piece of land along the border between Ohio and Michigan. Rumors in Ohio at the time described Michiganians as being as vicious and bloodthirsty as wolverines. This dispute became known as the Toledo War.
While the two sides argued over proper setting of the state line, The Michiganders were called wolverines. It was unclear, however, whether the Michigan natives pinned the name upon themselves to show their tenacity and strength or whether Ohioans chose the name on account of the gluttonous habit of the wolverine. From then on, Michigan was labeled "the Wolverine state": and when the University of Michigan was founded, it simply adopted the nickname of the state it represented.
6. Michigan State Spartans
In 1926, Michigan State's first southern baseball training tour provided the setting for the birth of the "Spartans" nickname.
It all came about when a Lansing sportswriter imposed the silent treatment on a contest-winning nickname and substituted his own choice, the name that has lasted through the years.
In 1925, Michigan State College replaced the name Michigan Agricultural College. The college sponsored a contest to select a nickname to replace "Aggies" and picked "The Michigan Staters."
George S. Alderton, then sports editor of the Lansing State Journal, decided the name was too cumbersome for newspaper writing and vowed to find a better one. Alderton contacted Jim Hasselman of Information Services to see if entries still remained from the contest. When informed that they still existed, Alderton ran across the entry name of "Spartans" and then decided that was the choice. Unfortunately, Alderton forgot to write down who submitted that particular entry, so that part of the story remains a mystery.
7. Minnesota Golden Gophers
Minnesota became known as the 'Gopher State' in 1857, the result of a political cartoon ridiculing the $5 million Railroad Loan which helped open up the West. The cartoon portrayed shifty railroad barons as striped gophers pulling a railroad car carrying the Territorial Legislature toward the "Slough of Despond". The first U of M yearbook bearing the name "Gopher Annual" appeared in 1887.
Minnesota's athletic teams became widely known as the "Gophers," but it was not until 1934 that the immortal Halsey Hall, great Minnesota sportswriter, and broadcaster, dubbed Bernie Bierman's all-gold uniformed team "The Golden Gophers". (Bierman chose the gold color because the football blended in with the uniforms!).
The embodiment of the Gopher mascot came to life in 1952 when assistant bandmaster Jerome Glass bought a fuzzy wool suit and asked technology junior Jim Anderson to climb into it.
"They took the guy who couldn't march or play and put him where he wouldn't do any harm," commented Anderson.
8. Nebraska Cornhuskers
Early nicknames for the university's athletic teams included Antelopes (later adopted by the University of Nebraska at Kearney), Old Gold Knights, and Bugeaters.
Cornhuskers first appeared in a school newspaper headline ("We Have Met The Cornhuskers And They Are Ours") after an 1893 victory over Iowa, though in this instance the term referred to Iowa.
It was first applied to Nebraska in 1899 by Nebraska State Journal writer Cy Sherman and was officially adopted by the school the following year – and later by the state of Nebraska itself, which became "The Cornhusker State" in 1945
9. Northwestern Wildcats
The Northwestern nickname developed in 1924 when Chicago Tribune reporter Wallace Abbey ’23 described the football team as “wildcats” after a tough loss to the University of Chicago. The name stuck.
10. Ohio State Buckeyes
A buckeye has two meanings. The first is a "small, shiny, dark brown nut with a light tan patch," according to Ohio State. The nut comes from the official state tree: a buckeye tree.
According to the university's Museum of Biological Diversity, the term "buckeye" originated with European immigrants coming to the Americas. Indigenous people noticed that Europeans had larger eyes, similar to those of a male buck deer. Thus, the term "buckeye" was born.
According to Ohio State's library, Col. Ebenezer Sproat was the first person referred to as a "hetuck," meaning "big buckeye," in 1788, 15 years before Ohio State became a state. In 1833, future president and General William Harrison used the term several times to describe a special group of Ohio soldiers during the War of 1812 who had conquered a superior number of enemies.
According to OSU, "buckeye" became more common in describing locals in the 1830s, and even more common during Harrison's 1840 presidential run.
According to Ohio State football historian Jack Park, newspapers started referring to the team as the Buckeyes since at least 1919. However, the team did not officially adopt the nickname for the program until 1950, when the state adopted it as its official nickname.
11. Oregon Ducks
Even though the uniforms have changed, no longer bearing his fighting countenance bursting through the block "O" logo, Donald Duck remains as one of the most recognizable and lovable mascots on the collegiate sports landscape.
Before Donald came to Eugene, thanks to the benevolence of Walt Disney, no duck seemed destined to represent the school as its mascot. In fact, during the University's early days, Oregon's pride was tied to a patriotic band of New England anglers with soggy soles. University students re-ferred to themselves as Webfooters.
Then through the intervening decades, once the duck nickname had found its rightful home, the downy mascot faced challenges from the Humane Society, the student newspaper, a football coach who preferred that his Donald bare his teeth, and a basketball coach who refused to even utter his name.
Originally, the prevailing campus sentiment was that the University shouldn't degrade itself by dabbling in such nonsense as nicknames and water fowl. The nickname game began early last century when Oregon was originally known as "The Webfoot State." Students took a shine to the slogan and referred to themselves as Webfoots and their yearbook as "The Webfoot." (When the new motto became "The Beaver State" in 1909, Oregon students changed the yearbook name to "The Beaver" before switching back.)
The Webfoots reference can be traced to a hearty band of Massachusetts fishermen, who in 1776 helped save General George Washington and some 10,000 of his troops from imminent defeat at the hands of the British. When many of the Webfoots' progeny migrated west of the Cascades and settled in the Willamette Valley in the 1840s, the name stuck to their muddy shoes and came with them.
L.H. Gregory, sports editor of The Oregonian, has been credited with coining Webfoots as the school's athletic nickname, even though the students had seen themselves as such since the turn of the century. Headline writers searching for ways to parse Webfoots into their sports pages began churning out Ducks, which the students eventually voted as their new nickname over Timberwolves and Lumberjacks. A second student-body election in 1932 beat back the challenges of Trappers, Pioneers, Yellowjackets and Spearsmen, the latter in honor of football coach C.W. Spears, who left before the '32 season for a similar post at Wisconsin.
12. Penn State Nittany Lions
According to the Penn State website, before 1904, the school didn't even have a mascot, save for a work mule named "Old Coaly" that helped in construction projects through the mid-1800s. (Old Coaly's skeleton can still be seen on the PSU campus).
The modern name, however, is credited to a member of the 1904 Penn State's baseball team, Harrison "Joe" Mason, during a road trip to Princeton. On April 20 of that year, a handful of Princeton players jeered Penn State's team as they arrived, pointing to a statue of their own mascot, the Bengal Tiger, as some show of strength.
Mason, according to legend, made up the "Nittany Lion" on the spot, pulling out the name from Mount Nittany that overlooks Penn State and the mountain lions that once inhabited Pennsylvania until the late 1800s.
Though the name stuck around in an unofficial sense, Mason pushed the name through a series of essays he published under a pseudonym in student publication The Lemon − which he was acting editor-in-chief − during his senior year in 1907. The mascot caught traction after appearing on the cover of the 1908 yearbook, and since then the Nittany Lion has stuck in the hearts and minds of Penn State alums.
13. Purdue Boilermakers
In 1889, the Purdue football team played Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana, and won the game 18-4. Students from the college and citizens of Crawfordsville began calling the Purdue players "a great big burly gang of corn-huskers", "grangers", "pumpkin-shuckers", "railsplitters", "blacksmiths," "cornfield sailors", and "foundry hands". The Purdue students experienced hands-on education at the university, including the maintenance of a fully operational steam locomotive.
Purdue defeated Wabash College again in 1891, 44–0. An account of the game in the Crawfordsville Daily Argus News of October 26, 1891, was headlined, "Slaughter of Innocents: Wabash Snowed Completely Under by the Burly Boiler Makers from Purdue". Purdue became known as the Boilermakers the next year.
14. Rutgers Scarlet Knights
Rutgers' school color is scarlet, but it wasn't always that way. Students originally wanted the color to be Orange, in reference to the Prince of Orange and Rutgers' Dutch connections. I think Michael Caine has said all that needs to be said about the Dutch .
So why Scarlet? You can blame The Daily Targum, Rutgers' student newspaper. In 1859 the fancy boys over at the Targum started a push to pick scarlet over orange because it was a striking color and scarlet ribbon was easy to find. So basically, Rutgers' school color is scarlet because they are a bunch of lazy pretty-boys.
In the early days of Rutgers football, the team was known either as "The Scarlet" or "The Queensmen." Why the Queensmen? The school used to be called Queen's College.
It took 30 years, but by 1955 Rutgers decided it was time for a change. They wound up settling on Scarlet Knights, but there were a few other options they considered: Queensmen, Scarlet, Red Lions, Redmen, and the Flying Dutchmen.
15. UCLA Bruins
The mighty Buccaneers? The California Gorillas?
Those were just two of the possible answers to the crisis that arose in October 1926.
In the spring of 1924, students from the Southern Branch of the University of California (as UCLA was known then) had discarded Cubs — a moniker that symbolized the campus’ fledgling status — to the fiercer Grizzlies name instead. But the University of Montana (members of the Pacific Coast Conference, which UCLA hoped to enter) claimed precedence to the name. In several exchanges of correspondence, Montana had threatened legal action unless UCLA changed its team name.
By Oct. 4, 1926, students had submitted more than 100 new names for campus to consider, including Pirates, Panthers, Buccaneers and Gorillas. Approximately half were alternative references to bears, including Silvertip, Kodiac and Bezudo. Though the California Daily Grizzly urged every student to enter at least one suggestion, some still held tightly to the Grizzly, refusing to surrender the field.
“I am decidedly against the proposed change,” opined senior class President Frank McKellar ’27. “I have not yet seen a suggestion which will suffice… Why should we relinquish a name which has been ours for so many years?”
The debate over adopting a “new cognomen” raged on the pages of the Daily Grizzly for nearly a week, with Buccaneers winning the most support. Students and administrators, including Dean of Women Helen Matthewson Laughlin and Dean of the Teachers College M.L. Darsie, weighed in on the matter in language befitting a federal courtroom.
The crisis finally was resolved through intervention from a surprising quarter. While it had been among the students’ suggestions, the name Bruins had been used alternately with Bears by Berkeley for years. In a show of brotherly unity, Berkeley’s student leaders offered the name Bruins to UCLA, and the Associated Student Council voted unanimously to adopt the name. The change was announced officially in the Oct. 22, 1926, issue of the rechristened California Daily Bruin, which also included a list of hastily rewritten cheers and yells for use at the following day’s football game against the tough Pomona Sagehens.
16. USC Trojans
According to the school's website, Southern California Athletic Director Warren Bovard, whose father Dr. George Bovard was the school president, asked Los Angeles Times sports editor Owen Bird to help Southern California choose a nickname. Southern California's website credits Bird, the sports editor, as being the one who created the nickname "Trojans."
It wasn't unusual for school nicknames or mascots to come from newspapers. The University of Arizona became the "Wildcats" after a Los Angeles Times writer wrote in 1914 that "The Arizona men showed the fight of wild cats."
However, it's somewhat unclear as to whether Bird created "Trojans" on his own, or if he thought of a nickname at Bovard's request.
"All of the media and coverage and write-ups that I've seen basically say that Owen Bird covered a track meet in early 1912," said Claude Zachary, a university archivist and manuscripts librarian at the University of Southern California Libraries, "which USC lost but he was struck by their fighting spirit so he said they fought like 'Trojans.'"
Warren Bovard and Bird once rode together in a parade organized to honor Fred Kelly, USC's first gold medalist and "the world's champion hurdler," according to a story published in the Los Angeles Times, so the athletic director and sports editor may have been in the same social circles.
"At this time, the athletes and coaches of the university were under terrific handicaps," Bird said, according to the school. "They were facing teams that were bigger and better-equipped, yet they had splendid fighting spirit. The name 'Trojans' fitted them.
"I came out with an article prior to a showdown between USC and Stanford in which I called attention to the fighting spirit of USC athletes and named them 'Trojan' all the time, and it stuck."
17. Washington Huskies
Washington's teams were called Sun Dodgers starting in 1919. The nickname originated when a college magazine of the same name was banned from campus and, in protest, students adopted the name for their teams. But the Sun Dodgers did not do much for the Northwest's image, so a committee set out in 1921 to pick a new nickname.
While no progress was being made on the name change, athletic officials adopted Vikings during the semester break in December of 1921. When the students returned to campus, they immediately protested the name change.
In an attempt to determine a mascot, the committee came down to two final choices -- Malamutes and Huskies. The committee felt those were appropriate because of Seattle's nearness to the Alaskan frontier. The Husky was voted the most appropriate.
The University officially accepted the nickname Huskies for its athletic teams on Feb. 3, 1922. The announcement was made at halftime of the Washington-Washington State basketball game. The nickname was selected by a joint comittee of students, coaches, faculty, alumni and businessmen. The name "Huskies" was presented at halftime by football captain-elect Robert Ingram. When Ingram made his speech, large white pacards were hoisted in the rooters section occupied by varsity letterwinners displaying the slogans: "The Husky stands for -- fight and tenacity -- character and courage -- endurance and willingness."
Other suggested nicknames were Wolves, Malamutes, Tyees, Vikings, Northmen and Olympics
18. Wisconsin Badgers
Wisconsin was dubbed the "Badger State" because of the lead miners who first settled there in the 1820s and 1830s.
Without shelter in the winter, they had to "live like badgers" in tunnels burrowed into hillsides. The badger mascot was adopted by the University of Wisconsin in 1889.
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