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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.
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.
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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.
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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....