The Holy Land of Hoops

The bit of logo/nickname/mascot discussion on the other thread got me thinking...most college team nicknames aren't just thought up by someone in the marketing department. A lot of them tend to have a pretty cool story behind them, so what's your story? Why do we call your team what we do? I'll start with Seton Hall.

SHU athletics teams were originally called the Villagers and then dropped that nickname to simply be know as "The White and Blue." They became the Pirates at a 1931 baseball game at then regional power Holy Cross. The Pirates trailed the Crusaders 10-6 in the 9th inning and the game was assumed to be more or less over, but the Hall battled back and put up a 5 spot in the 9th to claim an 11-10 win and become the first team in 4 years to defeat Holy Cross twice in 1 season. A sports writer at the game reported that Seton Hall stole the game like a band of pirates. The team decided they like the name and it stuck as the school's official mascot. From there on, SHU athletics teams were known as the Seton Hall Pirates.

For Creighton, they used to be the 'Hilltoppers'. Then, idk why, but they decided to change the nickname. They've always worn White and Blue and they chose "Bluejays" because it was unique and because of the colors of course. Creighton is the only D1 school in the country with the "Bluejays" nickname.

We don't want to talk about it.

aughnanure wrote:We don't want to talk about it.

Bricky forever!

Marquette has been the Blue and Gold, Hilltoppers, Warriors, Golden Eagles, Gold (for about a week), Golden Eagles (again) and the football team through 1960 was the Golden Avalanche.

The easiest way is to just copy and paste Wikipedia:

Butler University was founded as North Western Christian by Ovid Butler in 1855. He choose "Christians" as the school mascot. Sometime after the school had been rename in honor of its founder, Butler was suffering a poor football season in 1919. As losses mounted, people grew wary of the "Christians" nickname. Before a big game against the rival Franklin "Baptists", the Butler Collegian was trying to conceive of a way to fire people up when "Shimmy", a bulldog owned by one of the fraternities, wandered into their office. Shimmy inspired cartoonist George Dickson to draw a bulldog labeled "Butler" taking a bite out of John The Baptist. Butler lost the game, but the nickname "Bulldogs" stuck.

Eventually, the bulldog was selected as the official mascot of the university. For many years, Butler had unofficial live bulldog mascots that kept by various fraternities. In 2000, Butler Blue became the school's first official live mascot. To date, there have been three dogs to carry the name "Blue", the university's primary color.

OmahaGuy wrote:For Creighton, they used to be the 'Hilltoppers'. Then, idk why, but they decided to change the nickname. They've always worn White and Blue and they chose "Bluejays" because it was unique and because of the colors of course. Creighton is the only D1 school in the country with the "Bluejays" nickname.

The complete story, as updated by the WBR's Tom Nemitz:

http://whiteandbluereview.com/creighton ... h-history/

Isnt John Hopkins the Bluejays and arent they div 1 in Lacrosse?

Xavier is in a long line of schools that created a mascot to be in a Playboy article and make it to a Sportscenter commercial, where the mascot eats a Hall of Fame jacket owned by Jim Kelly.

St. John's used to play football, and our team wore all red. A new york sports reporter started to refer to us as the red men because of our uniforms. Then a few years later a group of our student boosters (which then became my fraternity) stole an old cigar store indian and started bringing it to all the games and thats how we got the name and the image together for the first time.

After decades as the Redmen it was changed to the Red Storm in 1993 and nobody likes that name.

http://nypost.com/2013/10/29/nickname-d ... -st-johns/