Hatters and Paladins and Camels

It is, once again, almost NCAA basketball tournament time. My alma mater, once again, will not be participating. And so my thoughts turn, once again, to unique college sports team nicknames (when I'm not rooting for the Wolverines anyway). 

Spurred on by a (perhaps) good natured comment from a friend ("guess when Kevin last posted about something other than music?") here, at long last, is a third edition of some of my favorite nicknames and the stories behind them. You can read the previous posts here and here.

Stetson Hatters. Okay, so it could be taken as just a very early example of a school selling out to a deep pocket. But it did result in an unusual nickname. Formerly DeLand Academy, Stetson first changed the name of the institution to recognize its major benefactor John B. Stetson of cowboy hat fame. And when it started playing football at the turn of the last century, its team became known as the Hatters. The school's mascot is "John B." who apparently received a heavy dose of PEDs before his reimaging in 2021. I think I prefer the earlier version that was "a leprechaun-looking Mad Hatter which was rumored to scare children and stopped making appearances in the 1990's."

(image from X)

Furman Purple Paladins. Familiarity with schools and their unusual nicknames may not necessarily breed contempt (although in at least one case it certainly does for me) but may cause complacency when it comes to a unique name that is right under your nose. So it is with the Purple Paladins, my brother's alma mater, ignored up until now on these lists. Apparently different sports teams at FU had different nicknames - Paladins for basketball, Hornets for baseball, and Purple Hurricane (not making this up) for football until, in 1961, the student body voted to name all of the school's teams the Paladins. The basketball team's nickname came from, you guessed it, a sportswriter named J. Carter "Scoop" Latimer (thank goodness he came up with a more original moniker than he was saddled with). The Purple part is a vestige of the earlier football team nickname.

Campbell Fighting Camels. Formerly the Hornets, Campbell changed its nickname to the Camels in the early 1930's although the reasons are not entirely clear. There's an apocryphal story about a campus fire and Campbell President J.A. Campbell being told to "get a hump" to buckle down and start the recovery. But that seems to have been effectively debunked. While another source posits that Campbell suggested the change "after the nearby Cape Fear River, known for its abundance of wild camels," AI tells me that "there is no evidence that wild camels ever lived along the Cape Fear River in North Carolina." Which makes a whole lot more sense. Whatever the reason, choosing Camels over Hornets was clearly the right move.

Loyola Chicago Ramblers. Originally the "Maroon and Gold" in 1925 Loyola's football coach, in conjunction with the school newspaper, conducted a contest to give the team a proper nickname. Unfortunately, the winning entry was the Grandees "tying in to the Spanish origins of St. Ignatius of Loyola." Fortunately, that didn't stick either and the media dubbed the 1926 team the Ramblers because of their extensive travel across the U.S. that season. From 1982-90 the school's mascot was "Bo (short for Hobo) Rambler." The athletics press packet for that season depicted a homeless man rambling across the Loyola logo. A year too late for the little girl below (meeting Bo in 1989), the mascot was changed to "LU Wolf" in 1990.

(from the Loyola University Chicago
Digital Special Collections)

Youngstown State Penguins. I had discounted the Penguins the first two times through this exercise because I assumed that it was one of those Johnny-come-lately too cool by half nicknames chosen in the early aughts. Au contraire! The name originated from a basketball game that Youngstown State played at West Liberty College in 1933. The visiting players' locker room was unheated and upon seeing the YSU players flapping their arms and stamping their feet to keep warm the Liberty coach observed that they "looked like a bunch of penguins." Current YSU mascots are humans wearing costumes as Pete and Penny Penguin, but they were preceded by three live penguins, also named Pete, all of whom (not surprisingly) met fairly early demises.

Missouri-Kansas City Kangaroos. Apparently they are going by just the "Roos" these days. Which I will blithely ignore. Much like the Penguins, I mistakenly believed that the Kangaroos were a recently chosen nickname. Wrong again! The Kangaroos moniker was chosen in the 1930's for the then University of Kansas City's first competitive team - the debate team. The whole city was "abuzz" about imminent arrival of Jigger the (pregnant) kangaroo's progeny at the Kansas City zoo and so the name was adopted first for the debaters, then for the school's sports teams as they formed in the next few years. One of the first print versions of Kasey the Kangaroo was drawn by none other than Walt Disney, a Kansas City native.

Purdue Fort Wayne Mastodons. Another odd nickname inspired by a local event, this time the discovery of a mastodon skeleton by a farmer near Angola, Indiana. The PFW geology department led the excavation of the skeleton, which is now on display in the student union on campus. Take a gander at some 13,000 year old bones on your way to root on the Mastodons!

Minnesota Golden Gophers. The Big Ten is actually chockfull of seldom seen nicknames, from Wolverines to Badgers to Hoosiers to Boilermakers to a certain large brown poisonous seed. But Golden Gophers? Do kids grow up wanting to be a Gopher someday? If you're from Minnesota, maybe you do. The nickname was somewhat of a natural one, since Minnesota has been known as the Gopher State dating back to the 1850's. A radio announcer added the Golden in the 1930's based on the football team's all gold uniforms.

Evansville Purple Aces. After the then Evansville Pioneers basketball team beat up on Louisville in the 1930's, Louisville's coach remarked to his Evansville counterpart that "You didn't have four aces up your sleeve, you had five!" The Evansville coach relayed the quote to a local sportswriter and both agreed that they preferred Aces to Pioneers (the journalist motivated, at least in part, by the ease with which Aces could fit into a headline). Evansville's colors then and now are purple and orange, and so the Purple Aces were born. Their mascot? Ace Purple, a "riverboat gambler" who bears an uncanny resemblance to Burt Reynolds.

(photo from gopurpleaces.com)

Wichita State Shockers. When then Fairmount College (now Wichita State) was preparing for a 1904 football game against a nearby school its manager came up with the name "Wheat Shockers" for the team because many of the players earned money for tuition and board by harvesting wheat. The name was later shortened to Shockers and officially adopted in 1926. The school's mascot is WuShock which google's AI describes as "a large, muscular creature designed to represent a 'bundle of wheat.'" Yes, it seems to completely defy logic to describe a shock of wheat as muscular.

That's it for this edition of unusual nicknames. Tune in again in 11 years or so for another.