sigma7 | From Aggies to Zips

So I've been hammering away at Excel to whip up a list of colleges and nicknames. I don't know Excel well enough, and I figured it'd be an interesting exercise to come up with a list and frequency for collegiate nicknames -- we know there are more Wildcats than Owls, but how many?

Armed with the data from this Web site, made a spreadsheet, then spent a while trying to create an intelligent count of the unique nicknames. That took me the longest time, but having solved it, I'd like to share my findings.

There were 1617 nicknames, 539 distinct -- some schools (like Georgia Tech and Hofstra) have multiple nicknames, and some schools have different nicknames for gendered sports teams (Lyon College, University of Central Arkansas) and even different sports (the Haverford College baseball team is the Black Squirrels). There are 354 mascots unique to their college, from the Ambassadors to the Zips. Your top ten mascots are the Eagles (61), Panthers (52), Tigers (45), Bulldogs (39), Wildcats (37), Lions (34), Cougars (32), Pioneers [!] (31), Warriors (30) and Knights (26). There are still teams called the Red Men (Carthage College; Carthago delenda est?) and the Redmen (University of Rio Grande), five Indians, and one Seminoles. Seven teams are in some way purple, 22 red, 35 blue, five black, 53 gold, seven green, 18 yellow, and one white -- the White Mules of Colby College, Waterville, Maine. There are two Bees, one Super Bees, one Maccabees. Two Squirrels, one Black Squirrels (as above).

Disclaimers: "Fighting" has been dropped from the nicknames. Geographically distinct campuses get counted as separate colleges (Davenport University accounts for 20 of the 52 Panthers). There are 160 colleges tabulated that have no official nickname, including several incarnations of DeVry University. Surely they should be the Infomercials.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I prefer the DeVry Kudzu.

Oh, the mules. Silly creatures (my school has a long running rivalry with Colby). We have the polar bears.

Yeah, a lot of schools go the multiple route. Washburn has Ichabods for men and Lady Blues for women. University of Alberta has a tiger and a panda IIRC, depending on the sport.

w00t for the Maccabees!

(also for the Buckeyes)

I was a little astonished that there were no other Buckeyes. I guess my estimation of its universality was based a bit on Les Nessman's proud ownership of the Buckeye Newshawk Award.

I am, variously, a Husky, a Ram, and a Seminole. Sometimes I get confused which one I am now :/

Heh -- I've been very lucky to have been a large feline, in one variant or another, since first grade (Lion, then Tiger, and Wildcat since). I may have been a Viking in kindergarten, though. (Which reminds me of Ralph Wiggum: "Oh boy, sleep! That's where I'm a viking!")

My gradeschool had school colors (blue and gold), but no mascot at the time, unless you count Saint Mary. Junior high was the Cardinals (red and black), and it fed into a high school that was also the Cardinals (red and white). College was the Bulldogs (purple and white...ironically a different middle school in my hometown had that mascot and colors), grad school was the Buckeyes, postdoc the Spartans, and currently the Wildcats. Whee.

I was a Ram twice (HS and during grad school Round 1), and I think in elementary school I was a Bulldog and a Falcon, which was... okay. I'm still trying to figure out the point of a mascot for elementary schools, because... they don't really have a function.

Being a Viking any time would be cool-- I've spent a couple years contemplating a Valkyrie Halloween costume, just because Vikings are awesome.

How many Beavers? I know we have a community college with that mascot and our high school mascot was the beaver... and so I am curious if other schools have gone that route, since you probably can't answer the real question: WHY?!!! I would so rather have been a Black Squirrel.

Both MIT and Caltech are Beavers, on the basis that it's nature's engineer with all the dam building.

I like to think you misspelled that and meant 'damn.'

Yeah, it sounds like an engineering mantra....

Would you believe ten beavers? (And that's terrible.)

Babson College (Wellesley, Massachusetts)

Bemidji State University (Bemidji, Minnesota)

Bluffton University (Bluffton, Ohio) (former name: Bluffton College)

Buena Vista University (Storm Lake, Iowa)

California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, California)

Champlain College (Burlington, Vermont)

City College of New York-City University of New York (New York, New York)

Minot State University (Minot, North Dakota)

Oregon State University (Corvallis, Oregon)

University of Maine-Farmington (Farmington, Maine)

Interesting references to both Bemidji and Minot. That's gotta be some kinda record.

It appears that the official athletic nickname for MIT is "Engineers" (which it shares with four other schools) -- though its animal mascot is, indeed, the beaver. Compare and contrast with Stanford, which changed its nickname from "Indians" to "Cardinal" -- not the bird, but the color, and has an unofficial mascot, the Stanford Tree.

Unfortunately, one school which should have different nicknames for the men's and women's teams doesn't. Thus, the University of South Carolina's women's teams go by "Lady Gamecocks" and sometimes have to put up with the cheer of "Go 'Cocks!".

sometimes have to put up with the cheer of "Go 'Cocks!"

The rallying cry for many a dorm I've known.

I bet there was only one "Judges"! Brandeis represent!

Re: Indian mascots, there are many others like the Utes, the Chippewas, the Fighting Sioux, the Illini... the Seminoles, in fact, may be the only one of these that has official approval from the tribe they portray. Seminole leaders designed Chief Osceola's costume in its current incarnation, Seminole tribe members get special scholarships to FSU, and while some activists continue to criticize the Seminoles, there's not a lot to be done when the tribe itself is cool with it. Too bad they still suck at football. ;-)

(Any other Gators?)

I'm a fan of non-plural mascots like the Crimson Tide, the Thundering Herd, etc.

Yeah, there's a nice size of native nomenclature, just damn hard to pick out in the list. And there's a few other ethnicities bouncing about, too -- Saxons, Irish (of course), Gaels and Britons among others.

Gatorwise there's six more: Allegheny College (Meadville, Pennsylvania); College of Notre Dame of Maryland (Baltimore, Maryland); Pine Manor College (Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts); Russell Sage College (Troy, New York); San Francisco State University (San Francisco, California); and University of Houston-Downtown (Houston, Texas). Which is six more than I was expecting, really.

Some of these mascots are just colorful enough that you can't help but pull for them -- the Evergreen State Geoducks (probably not what you would imagine), the McDaniel College Green Terror, the Oregon Institute of Technology Hustlin' Owls, the Oakland City University Mighty Oaks, the University of Maine-Augusta Moose (definite upgrade from "Raiders"), the Whittier College Poets (God, how humiliating for their opponents -- "we got blown out by the Poets last night, man") and the great mascots from the California school system that give us Banana Slugs, Gauchos and Tritons....

I've been an Eagle, a Daisy, and a Saint. I think St. Andrews Saints is pretty lacking in imagination, to be honest.

My favourite team name is the Macon Whoopie (Macon, GA).

One of a kind.

From Aggies to Zips

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