I started thinking about sports nicknames when the St. Peter’s Peacocks defeated the Kentucky Wildcats. As improbable as St. Peter’s beating Kentucky at basketball seemed, imagine a confrontation between a wild cat and a peacock. I would definitely take the wildcats in a predator vs. prey bracket.
It is likely that the first sports teams (loosely defined) and nicknames, were based around Roman chariot races. Initially, there were four teams: Reds, Whites, Greens, and Blues. By the time of Justinian (roughly mid-6th century), there were only two teams: the Greens (absorbed the Reds) and Blues (captured the Whites). The teams and their fans had become associated with opposing political and religious positions.[1] The Blues and Greens found common cause when taxes were raised and the leaders of the teams were arrested for dissenting, precipitating the Nika Riots.[2] Justinian exercised less patience and restraint than modern police forces; he sent the army into the Hippodrome, where they killed as many as 30,000 Romans. Think about what you would do if, at the next baseball or football game you attend, hundreds of armored, sword-wielding troops started stabbing and hacking away at the people in attendance.
There is no direct link between the Romans and the Ivy League, but
1. The Romans had the Reds — the Ivies have Big Red (Cornell) and Crimson (Harvard),[3]
2. The Romans had the Greens — the Ivies have Big Green (Dartmouth), and
3. The Romans had the Blues and the Whites — the Ivies have two teams whose colors are blue and white (Columbia and Yale).
I think it’s just that colors are elemental. An extreme example (chosen at random, though I was seeking early professional baseball) is the 1878 version of major league baseball. The six teams in the National League were the Boston Red Stockings, Cincinnati Reds, Providence Grays, Chicago White Stockings, Indianapolis Blues, and Milwaukee Grays. By 1903, only three of 16 teams had a color in their name: White Sox, Blues, and Reds. Today four of 30 MLB teams have a color in their name. I’ll let you guess.[4]
The NFL’s 32 teams have no teams with a color in their name. Through the years they have had Maroons, Red Jackets, Yellow Jackets, Blues, and Reds (Cincinnati, of course), but since the Redskins (can I say that? – even in this context) became the Commanders (by way of The Washington Football Team), no NFL team has a color in its name. But what about the Browns? Turns out the Browns weren’t named for a color, they were named after their first head coach, Paul Brown.
It strikes me that “Browns” might not have been so accepted if it wasn’t a color and long associated with one of MLB’s St. Louis franchises. As far as I know, no other sports team in the country is named after a person.[5] I don’t think Cleveland football fans would have embraced the Cleveland McBrides (first owner), Modells, Lerners, or Haslams quite like they have the Browns.
Recently and with great publicity, the Cleveland Indians became the Cleveland Guardians and the Washington Redskins, an obviously pejorative term, became the Washington Commanders. Miami University beat Washington in the name change game by about 25 years – morphing into the Redhawks in 1997.
Might there be other names that are ripe for reconsideration. The world of college sports is full of strange names, many of them under the radar because of the low profile that most schools keep. Who knew that the Arkansas Tech University men compete as Wonder Boys and the women as Golden Suns? Or that at Angelo State (Texas), the men compete as the Rams and the women as the Rambelles?[6] At the University of Arkansas at Monticello, the men compete as the Boll Weevils and the women as the Cotton Blossoms.
I could do this all day, having not yet made it through the As, but I want to focus on the Spartans. Around 300 high schools and over 20 colleges in the country are called the Spartans, most notably the Michigan State Spartans.[7]
The original Spartans were stone cold killers. Every Spartan male was a soldier and did not work because they had at least five times as many slaves (called helots) as Spartans. The Spartans had a simple way of controlling the helot population: when it got too high, they killed helots, as many as 2,000 at a time. Spartans may also have engaged in institutionalized pederasty, Plutarch certainly thought so, by assigning 12-year-old boys to an older Spartan for training.
The glorious stand of the 300 was real, but it was only possible because of slave labor back home. I wonder how many students, alumni, and fans realize how vicious the actual Spartans were. And I wonder how many other sports nicknames will be changed as we move forward. But mostly I wonder whether the Wildcats (Villanova’s version) will beat the Jayhawks (birds and cats again, though in this case, a mythical bird) and whether the Blue Devils[8] will beat the Tar Heels.
[1] The Blues allied with the ruling classes and religious orthodoxy and the Greens with the people and Monophysitism (a fascinating topic in its own right).
[2] The leaders were sentenced to be hung and a mass hanging was scheduled. Only a few died before the gallows collapsed, after which the survivors were spared.
[3] The very first issue of the school’s student newspaper, called The Harvard Crimson for the past hundred plus years, was The Magenta. But the undergrads voted for crimson (in the late 19th century) and so it has been ever since.
[4] Answer: Red Sox, White Sox, Reds, and Blue Jays. In the early days of the Cold War, the Cincinnati team changed its name to Redlegs because Reds was associated with communism.
[5] The Cleveland franchise was once known as the Naps in honor of star player Napoleon (“Nap”) Lajoie.
[6] Quick internet search suggests that “Rambelles” might have no other association in the world other than as the name of the women’s sports teams at Angelo State.
[7] https://masseyratings.com/mascots?m=Spartans
[8] MLB’s Tampa Bay Devil Rays dropped the demonic association in 2007 and are now simply the Rays, as in ray of sunshine, not flat fish. Duke has not been so inclined, although becoming the Blues would be very Roman of them.