The Once and Never Nodaks: Officiating Nickname Histories
If UND Teams are former “Nodaks,” then SDSU jocks are former “Sodaks” ... and they aren’t.
In the introduction to Naming Rites , I took pains to point out that the nicknames for the earliest sports teams were transitory and in no way official. Because such off-hand monikers were used to break the monotony by substituting for a more authoritative name (like “the University of Alabama football team”), they speak more to the actual definition of nickname in a way that the trademark protections for Alabama’s “Crimson Tide” [note 1, below] and Georgetown’s “Hoyas” do not.
You can peruse many examples of alternate team names in sport columns floating around Internet archives, but few show the showering of nicknames with the tenacity of this 1952 game report:
From the Daily Nebraskan (23 Sep. 1952), p. 3, reproduced HERE by the Nebraska State Historical Society and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
Even though “Coyotes” had been associated with University of South Dakota squads for a half-century at this point, this writer refers to its footballers as “Sodaks” before using “Coyotes.” Then he refers to the University of Nebraska’s “Husker eleven” as both “Cornhuskers” and the “Scarlet and Cream” [note 2].
Surely no reader in 1952 would mistake “Sodaks” or “Crimson and Cream” (or especially “eleven”) for any kind of sanctioned nickname, and it’s doubtful the reporter intended to make that suggestion, but when a single instance of such a name is unearthed on microfilm by a diligent researcher decades later … Voila! … it instantly attains “former nickname” status [note 3]. I argue that off-hand comments like these have fooled folks at the University of North Dakota into believing “Nodaks” and “Flickertails” are nicknames of some authenticity from bygone days. (See my UND nickname timeline HERE).
Temporarily assigning the name “Sodaks” to South Dakota players with “S-O-D-A-K” across their chests does little to tax the imagination. It’s like teams “formerly called the Normals” (from the many normal colleges) who had “N-O-R-M-A-L” shirts ... or “Staters” stamped “S-T-A-T-E.” Those handles are hardly more risqué than calling your sister “Sis” or a goalie named Sullivan “Sully,” something I wish was more appreciated by the many colleges who insist their earliest baseballers were called the Nine or footballers the Eleven.
I’ve seen no convincing evidence that “Nodaks” is any different from “Sodaks” in that it owes simply to a few improvisations that some sports scribe inferred from “N-O-D-A-K” tank tops. Give USD credit then, for being more forthcoming than most colleges, admitting HERE that its nick evolved more from habit than decree: “The Coyote was customarily assumed to be the mascot ... without any official action by the USD student body.” In fact, officially or otherwise, they're now “Yotes” at least as often as “Coyotes.”
Part of the problem then is the casual misuse of official itself by folks everywhere who think the official start of summer is the May celebration of Memorial Day (it’s actually in late June) or that the president’s wife is the official First Lady of the United States (no such position) or that Wisconsin’s official nickname is “Badger State” (rather, the badger is the official state animal). In other words, “We’ve been calling them Mustangs in the College Gazette for so long that we have lazily bestowed officiality upon the name even in the absence of assent from any adjudicative magistrate.”
For example, Amherst College officially dropped its “Lord Jeffs” nickname in 2015, which should not have been necessary because it simultaneously insisted that it’s “never had an official mascot.” I guess one should then forget that the school has historically directed shoppers to a local store that carried Lord Jeffs merch, and the college’s on-campus inn has been called the Lord Jeffrey since 1926.
When Shaquille O’Neal was traded to the Boston Celtics in 2010, he used twitter to solicit nominees for his new nickname. I remember thinking at the time that a public vote wasn’t really in line with the organic nature of History’s Best Nicknames. But that’s how colleges and extremely large men who play basketball seem to be doing things nowadays, so if UND insists upon voting for a new team identity, they need not be influenced by romantic but false remembrances of nicknames past.
While we’re here, we’ll point out that UND explicitly claims that the more official team ID from 1911 to 1930 was “Flickertails” (a colloquial reference to Richardson’s ground squirrel). But it couldn’t have been that darned official because “Flickertails” does not show up at all in this examination of pre-1930 yearbooks by Rebecca Beitsch of the Bismarck Tribune.
It’s in no way unique to North Dakota, but figuring out when “Nodaks” or “Flickertails” officially became the “Fighting Sioux” is a bit like nailing down when and where the “Bob” nickname for Hall of Fame Cardinals pitcher Robert Gibson morphed into “Gibby.”
Good luck with that.
UPDATE: UND adopted the “Fighting Hawks” moniker on 18 November 2015.
••••••••••••••••••••
Click HERE to return to the Naming Rites Blog table of contents. Glenn Arthur Pierce is the author of Naming Rites: A Biographical History of North American Team Names, now available at Amazon.com. (Click “Read Excerpt” HERE.)
••••••••••••••••••••
Notes:
1. University of Alabama administrators have even convinced themselves that they own the word “Alabama.” The University of Kentucky feels the same about “Kentucky.”
2. For “Scarlet and Cream,” I’d prefer to see the capital letters dropped, but it otherwise remains a colorful way of referring to one’s favorite side. A few programs, like Harvard’s Crimson or U. Toronto’s Varsity Blues, never quit the habit.
3. For single-source instances of team names erroneously accepted as “former nicknames,” I habitually cite this well-researched essay by Bill Nowlin, which disproves many of the supposedly official nicknames for Boston’s MLB teams.
© Glenn Arthur Pierce, 2015, 2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Glenn Arthur Pierce and the book Naming Rites with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
short URL: www.bit.do/unofficialNODAKS
In the introduction to Naming Rites , I took pains to point out that the nicknames for the earliest sports teams were transitory and in no way official. Because such off-hand monikers were used to break the monotony by substituting for a more authoritative name (like “the University of Alabama football team”), they speak more to the actual definition of nickname in a way that the trademark protections for Alabama’s “Crimson Tide” [note 1, below] and Georgetown’s “Hoyas” do not.
You can peruse many examples of alternate team names in sport columns floating around Internet archives, but few show the showering of nicknames with the tenacity of this 1952 game report:
From the Daily Nebraskan (23 Sep. 1952), p. 3, reproduced HERE by the Nebraska State Historical Society and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
Even though “Coyotes” had been associated with University of South Dakota squads for a half-century at this point, this writer refers to its footballers as “Sodaks” before using “Coyotes.” Then he refers to the University of Nebraska’s “Husker eleven” as both “Cornhuskers” and the “Scarlet and Cream” [note 2].
Surely no reader in 1952 would mistake “Sodaks” or “Crimson and Cream” (or especially “eleven”) for any kind of sanctioned nickname, and it’s doubtful the reporter intended to make that suggestion, but when a single instance of such a name is unearthed on microfilm by a diligent researcher decades later … Voila! … it instantly attains “former nickname” status [note 3]. I argue that off-hand comments like these have fooled folks at the University of North Dakota into believing “Nodaks” and “Flickertails” are nicknames of some authenticity from bygone days. (See my UND nickname timeline HERE).
Temporarily assigning the name “Sodaks” to South Dakota players with “S-O-D-A-K” across their chests does little to tax the imagination. It’s like teams “formerly called the Normals” (from the many normal colleges) who had “N-O-R-M-A-L” shirts ... or “Staters” stamped “S-T-A-T-E.” Those handles are hardly more risqué than calling your sister “Sis” or a goalie named Sullivan “Sully,” something I wish was more appreciated by the many colleges who insist their earliest baseballers were called the Nine or footballers the Eleven.
I’ve seen no convincing evidence that “Nodaks” is any different from “Sodaks” in that it owes simply to a few improvisations that some sports scribe inferred from “N-O-D-A-K” tank tops. Give USD credit then, for being more forthcoming than most colleges, admitting HERE that its nick evolved more from habit than decree: “The Coyote was customarily assumed to be the mascot ... without any official action by the USD student body.” In fact, officially or otherwise, they're now “Yotes” at least as often as “Coyotes.”
Part of the problem then is the casual misuse of official itself by folks everywhere who think the official start of summer is the May celebration of Memorial Day (it’s actually in late June) or that the president’s wife is the official First Lady of the United States (no such position) or that Wisconsin’s official nickname is “Badger State” (rather, the badger is the official state animal). In other words, “We’ve been calling them Mustangs in the College Gazette for so long that we have lazily bestowed officiality upon the name even in the absence of assent from any adjudicative magistrate.”
For example, Amherst College officially dropped its “Lord Jeffs” nickname in 2015, which should not have been necessary because it simultaneously insisted that it’s “never had an official mascot.” I guess one should then forget that the school has historically directed shoppers to a local store that carried Lord Jeffs merch, and the college’s on-campus inn has been called the Lord Jeffrey since 1926.
When Shaquille O’Neal was traded to the Boston Celtics in 2010, he used twitter to solicit nominees for his new nickname. I remember thinking at the time that a public vote wasn’t really in line with the organic nature of History’s Best Nicknames. But that’s how colleges and extremely large men who play basketball seem to be doing things nowadays, so if UND insists upon voting for a new team identity, they need not be influenced by romantic but false remembrances of nicknames past.
While we’re here, we’ll point out that UND explicitly claims that the more official team ID from 1911 to 1930 was “Flickertails” (a colloquial reference to Richardson’s ground squirrel). But it couldn’t have been that darned official because “Flickertails” does not show up at all in this examination of pre-1930 yearbooks by Rebecca Beitsch of the Bismarck Tribune.
It’s in no way unique to North Dakota, but figuring out when “Nodaks” or “Flickertails” officially became the “Fighting Sioux” is a bit like nailing down when and where the “Bob” nickname for Hall of Fame Cardinals pitcher Robert Gibson morphed into “Gibby.”
Good luck with that.
UPDATE: UND adopted the “Fighting Hawks” moniker on 18 November 2015.
••••••••••••••••••••
Click HERE to return to the Naming Rites Blog table of contents. Glenn Arthur Pierce is the author of Naming Rites: A Biographical History of North American Team Names, now available at Amazon.com. (Click “Read Excerpt” HERE.)
••••••••••••••••••••
Notes:
1. University of Alabama administrators have even convinced themselves that they own the word “Alabama.” The University of Kentucky feels the same about “Kentucky.”
2. For “Scarlet and Cream,” I’d prefer to see the capital letters dropped, but it otherwise remains a colorful way of referring to one’s favorite side. A few programs, like Harvard’s Crimson or U. Toronto’s Varsity Blues, never quit the habit.
3. For single-source instances of team names erroneously accepted as “former nicknames,” I habitually cite this well-researched essay by Bill Nowlin, which disproves many of the supposedly official nicknames for Boston’s MLB teams.
© Glenn Arthur Pierce, 2015, 2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Glenn Arthur Pierce and the book Naming Rites with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
short URL: www.bit.do/unofficialNODAKS
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Glenn Arthur Pierce is the author Naming Rites: A Biographical History of North American Team Names. This companion blog continues to track trends and controversies pertaining to team names past and p
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