Ramblin' Wreck, Golden Hurricane, or Thundering Herd?

College mascots tend to be plural. Any team consists of a group of people, and a college or university as a whole imagines itself as an association of different groups: alumni, the faculty, the student body. Even more curious, then, that there exist a number of exceptions to this plurality of the plural. Included below are the major college mascots whose common name does not end with an “S.”

Color seems to be popular among the S-less set. The Dartmouth Big Green, the North Texas Mean Green, and the Cornell Big Red slightly modify their color of choice, while the Stanford Cardinal and Harvard Crimson dance around varying shades of red.



The forces of nature get equal attention, and this time it is they who are colored, as with the Alabama Crimson Tide, the St. Johns Red Storm, the Tulane Green Wave, and the Tulsa Golden Hurricane. That last one sounds far too dirty to be repeated in public, but I imagine that the Golden Hurricane faithful take great pride in their moniker nonetheless.



Animal names are by far the most common college mascots, and they are equally well represented with out a trailing S. Although there are the Bison of Bucknell and Howard and the Wolfpack of Nevada and North Carolina State, a number of animals whose groupings are referenced without Mr. S are without major college representation. Lions without pride, birds without flock, and, perhaps not surprisingly, neither geese nor gander. And, lest we forget about the trend of descriptive intervention, there is the Marshall Thundering Herd, a personal favorite.

Mascot names involving the human animal tend to be culturally or geographically specific, as is the case with the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame, the Fighting Illini of Illinois, the Minutemen of Massachusetts, the Statesmen of Hobart, or the Flying Dutchmen of Hofstra. Actually, I don’t understand the last one at all. It is culturally specific, but what Dutch culture has to do with Hofstra is anyone’s guess. Anyway, after an occupational nod to the Navy Midshipmen and human-color hybrid wave to the Syracuse Orangemen, we’re left with nothing. Nothing except for Georgia Tech. Yellow Jackets ends with an S you say? True, but by as early as 1885 Georgia Tech had been known as the Ramblin’ Wreck, an identifier that predates the Yellow Jacket by at least twenty years. And with a such a sweet ride to accompany the name, who needs Buzz or his pluralism?