COLLEGE SPORTS NICKNAMES
An earlier column examined New Hampshire
high school sports nicknames and identified Franklin’s Golden Tornadoes as the
top nickname in the state.
Now we turn our attention to colleges.
New Hampshire colleges have unremarkable
nicknames like Wildcats (UNH), Panthers, (Plymouth State), Owls (Keene State),
and Hawks (St. Anselm). And worst of all, the lamentable and nebulous Big Green
of Dartmouth College. “Indians” was much better.
I have nothing against Lions, Falcons,
Bears, Cardinals, Cougars, Bobcats or Tigers—other than they are blasé and say
nothing about the institution. For example, MIT’s teams are the Engineers. That
makes sense. Ditto for Purdue University’s Boilermakers.
There are some interesting nicknames. Muhlenberg
College has the Mules. Maine’s Colby College has the White
Mules. But how about the “Golden Mules?”
Earlham College featutes
the Hustlin' Quakers. I like that almost as much as I like Wilmington College’s
Fighting Quakers, which is a bit oxymoronic, given that Quakers are ostensibly
pacifists.
Campbell
University has the Fighting Camels. Alliteration has its
place, as with Canisius
College’s Golden Griffins.
Coastal
Carolina University has the Chanticleers. As I doubt that
many readers know what a Chanticleer is, I’ll share that it’s a proud and
fierce rooster who dominates the barnyard.
(I think I’d rather be a Chanticleer than a Mule.)
Eastern
Arizona College players are Gila Monsters. Nice. But you have
to love Evergreen
State College’s Geoducks. These are not birds, but rather the world’s
largest clams, weighing three pounds on average, and often unable to fit within
their own shells.
Idaho
has the Vandals, apparently honoring of the Germanic tribes that sacked Rome.
Larry Bird’s alma mater, Indiana
State University has the
Sycamores. But who wants to be a tree? (This
is almost as bad as Big Green.)
Athletes at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne are
Mastodons. (At the risk of being sexist, I wonder if the female athletes at
IPFW want to be Mastodons.)
Lincoln
Memorial University has the Railsplitters. Cool. As is Marshall
University’s Thundering Herd. (But what do you call a single
Marshall player?)
Duke’s Blue Devils may be NCAA men’s hoop champs, but North
Carolina’s Tar Heels are cooler.
Ohio
Northern University has the Polar Bears. Huh? Must be extremely northern Ohio. Ohio
State University’s Buckeyes are named after a flowery shrub,
that Ohioans claim is really a tree, which still makes the nickname almost as
bad as Sycamores.
Sports squads at Rhode
Island School of Design are known as the Nads. Go Nads! Saint
Peter's College in New Jersey has the Peacocks and Peahens—obviously
genderized. And if Notre Dame can have the Fighting Irish, then Yeshiva
University can have the Maccabees, aka the Fighting Jews! And
speaking of fighting, consider Ohio
Valley University’s Fighting Scots or Ohio
Wesleyan University Battlin' Bishops.
Oklahoma
has the Sooners—named after cheats who claimed land in Oklahoma before they
were supposed to. OU players may as well claim to be the Oklahoma Cheaters.
Apparently “Golden is Good,” as in Golden Bulls (Johnson
C. Smith University), Golden Tornadoes (Geneva
College), Golden Gusties (Gustavus
Adolphus College), Golden Eagles (John
Brown University), Golden Flashes (Kent
State University),Golden Hurricane (Tulsa),
or the Golden Tigers (Tuskegee
University).
Finalists …
After extensive review and considerable
thought, the finalists in the nickname competition included the Green Terror (McDaniel College), the Prairie Wolves (Nebraska
Wesleyan University), the Pygmies (New Mexico Mining & Technology), the Hardrockers (South Dakota School of Mines and Technology), the Mad Hatters (Stetson
University), the Hokies (Virginia Tech), and the
Horned Frogs (Texas
Christian University).
But ultimately,
the clear winner had to be the Flaming Smelts of Shimer College. What
could possibly top a Flaming Smelt?