Rufus Arizona, UA’s first live wildcat mascot, hung himself from a tree limb on April 17, 1916—just months after being purchased as the school’s mascot. I suspect he was suicidal after he learned the story of how the university adopted the wildcats nickname.

5) Another dead cat

In 1885, when the 13th Territorial Legislature awarded Tucson the University of Arizona (instead of the higher prized appropriations that accompanied the insane asylum or the state capital), Tucson citizens were so angry at receiving a university no one wanted that they pelted their returning legislators with ripe eggs, rotten tomatoes and—foreshadowing their future mascot—a dead cat. Talk about wildcat pride…

4) Arizona’s First (Remedial) University

Nonetheless, U of A heavily promotes that it was Arizona’s first university. What they fail to mention, besides the less-than-proud tradition mentioned above, is that there was little need for a university in the Arizona Territory, which didn’t even have a high school at the time. While the “university” accepted students from its first day of class, the vast majority were placed in a specially established remedial prep school. It took 17 years for university students to outnumber those in prep classes, which were maintained for 23 years. It’s hard not to chuckle when you see a billboard U of A purchased to promote a less-than-proud beginning.

3) An obvious lie

The ubiquitous motto of Arizona Athletics is “Bear Down.” The basic story goes like this: star QB gets seriously injured in a car accident. On his death bed, he relays a message to his teammates through his coach, telling the team to “bear down” and inspiring the team to pull off a critical win. Unfortunately, virtually all of this is myth, pure and simple. Details are sketchy, but few comport with the mythology. At best, the motto wasn’t inspirational at all and the team grossly underperformed, nearly losing to a far weaker opponent. At best, it was all just made up by Coach McKale—which seems like the most likely truth.

2) High school colors

U of A’s original school colors were sage green and silver, representing sage brush and the state’s mining industry. However, in 1900, student manager Quintas J. Anderson was offered, at an extremely low price, a set of used solid blue uniforms trimmed in red. U of A bought the uniforms and changed their school colors to red and blue to match the sale-priced uniforms. So much for tradition, originality, or Arizona pride.

1) Maybe not the proudest moment

On November 7, 1914, the Arizona “Varsity” football team was shut out 14-0 by the team from Occidental College in California. Bill Henry, a student correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, tossing the visitors a bone after a sound defeat, wrote that the Arizona team “showed the fight of wild cats” while getting pummeled by Occidental. For some reason, the fans in Tucson were elated at the newspaper article and eager to adopt the throwaway line of an out of town student sports reporter as their school’s mascot. And it’s been Wildcats ever since.

Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up.

➞ You might also enjoy my large collection of Wildcat jokes.

The post 6 embarrassing facts you didn’t know about the Arizona Wildcats appeared first on rscottjones.

The story goes, star QB and class president “Button” Salmon gets critically injured in a car wreck. His dying words are to Coach McKale at his bedside, telling the team to “bear down” in their upcoming big game. Coach tells the team while they’re at the stadium, and they proceed to valiantly pull off the upset win due to their motivation and grit—inspired by their dead teammate’s dying words.

Good story, huh?

The truth is far less appealing. First, UA now admits that it doesn’t actually know which game that season it reportedly happened at—a rather important detail in the story. Maybe it was New Mexico State the week after the funeral, maybe it was New Mexico several weeks (and a couple of games) later, possibly it was one of the other three games (only one of which was a win). What we do know is that McKale didn’t say anything about Button’s words until he reportedly told the team at the game.

If it had been New Mexico or one of the other games, then it seems a bit unlikely that the coach would have forgotten to honor Button’s dying wish and relay his “bear down” to the team before the next game. Simply put, it was probably just something he simply made up as a good story. But UA isn’t sure which game. Uh huh.

But even if it was against New Mexico State the week after the funeral, the inspirational words shouldn’t have played much of a factor. First of all, the team had already played two games while Button laid paralyzed in the hospital. They had won 54-0 and 35-0, so I guess they didn’t miss their starting QB as much as one might think. And, remarkably, he apparently didn’t give any words of encouragement to the team during that time. According to McKale, he saved that until the coach had to specifically ask him the day before he died if he had any words for the team.

New Mexico State was winless on the season and undefeated UA was already heavily favored, even without Button. That’s not surprising, UA was on a nine-win streak against lowly NMSU, winning by a combined score of 265-14 with shutouts in all but two games. UA went on to play a terrible game against a weak opponent, but managed to eek out 7-0 win in what should have been a blowout.

So even if the “best case” scenario for this is actually true, it involved a poorly played, lackluster win over a creampuff opponent. It’s actually rather clear that the team did not honor their teammate’s words to “Bear Down.” They very narrowly escaped doing the literal opposite: a embarrassingly loss to a far inferior opponent. Simply put, the message wasn’t inspirational to the team; they did not play close to their ability and certainly not “inspired football,” and they let down their dead teammate.

Nonetheless, UA proudly celebrates its own failure to live up to the so-called inspiring words of its fallen player. In many ways, #beardown is as much an insult as it is the school’s athletic motto.

So yes, UA, #beardown. Bear down indeed.

You might also want to read about 6 embarrassing things about the Arizona Wildcats or my collection of U of A jokes.

The post The real story behind Arizona’s “Bear Down” motto appeared first on rscottjones.