College Pigskin, Week 9

The ratings chart is delayed until Tuesday this week, as we await the first official committee ranking.

In the meantime:

On the field

#1 Miami barely survived against Belichick’s tough North Carolina squad. The Tar Heels are good, much improved from last year, but not quite there yet. The Hurricanes have a major obstacle remaining in their path toward an unblemished season: #5 Notre Dame is next, and the game is in South Bend.

#2 THE Ohio State University lost for the usual simple reason  – the Big Ten is a tough town, where every other gunslinger represents danger. Well, except Rutgers. In the Wild West metaphor they are driving the chuckwagon. OSU seems to take pleasure in their reputation as the baddest man in town, hated by everyone. And let’s face it, everybody outside of Columbus loves to see them gunned down. If you go to Nepal to climb Everest, the Sherpas will say, “Oh, you American! We love American. Except Buckeye.” The Buckeyes amassed 464 yards of offense, but just couldn’t close the sale against USC. They kicked a bunch of field goals, but didn’t cross the goal line until the fourth quarter, by which time it was too late.

#4 Indiana barely escaped once again, with an OT win over Minnesota, after being down 10-7 at halftime. They make every game an adventure. This one, however, wasn’t another “outplayed but won” situation. They held Minnesota to 215 yards.

#6 Utah remained undefeated and made a statement by scoring 42 in the first half against a pretty good opponent (Cincinnati). If they keep up the momentum, the Utes are in a good position to earn a first-round bye in the tournament. This year, in a change, the byes go to the top four teams in the final committee ranking, whether or not they are conference champions. The Utes have a key match-up next week against their intrastate rival, #8 BYU, which also won this week to advance to 7-1.

#7 UCLA also remained undefeated in a 27-0 non-conference laugher against Nevada, but they will finish the season with four Big Ten games, so that unblemished record will be challenged constantly.

#20 Boise State hung on for a wild 46-45 victory. This is crucial because the top-ranked team from the conferences outside the Power Four gets an automatic entry into the post-season tournament. Boise is currently in the catbird’s seat.

#25 Wisconsin had made it into the ranks for the first time this week, and immediately showed that they didn’t belong. I’ve said all year that they have no offense, and they proved it in a 30-0 loss. It won’t surprise me if they lose to Rutgers next week.

Football oddity: A kid from Boston College, Carter Davis, made an incredible 100-yard runback of a blocked PAT. By the rules governing football stats, those 100 yards never existed! Under the NCAA’s official statistics rules, no individual yardage is credited for a defensive extra-point return, regardless of how far the player runs. He earned his team two points for a safety, and they were the only two points BC scored in a 47-2 loss.

 

The Lower Depths of College Nicknames

At the major universities, football nicknames tend to be predictably ferocious. Everybody wants to be a Tiger, a Bulldog, a Wildcat, or some other creature capable of inflicting serious bodily injury, but when you descend into the lower divisions of college football, you enter a different world. There are teams named after agricultural pests, vegetables, philanthropists, Broadway musicals, and things that don’t actually exist.

Williams College Ephs — Ephelia the Purple Cow

Williams College, in Williamstown, Massachusetts, has one of the strangest combinations of nickname and mascot in college athletics. The NCAA Division III school calls its teams the Ephs, pronounced “Eefs.”

What the hell is an Eph?

It’s short for Ephraim, as in Colonel Ephraim Williams Jr., an eighteenth-century soldier whose bequest helped establish the college in 1793. The name is certainly distinctive, although it’s difficult to imagine an offensive lineman finding inspiration in a diminutive of a dead philanthropist’s first name.

Williams is represented by Ephelia, a purple cow. Instead of the eye of the tiger, they have the dull, lifeless stare of the dairy cow.

Well, we were looking for a female mascot for a men’s team, and we found it.

 

That’ll strike terror into the hearts of their opponents. To quote Count Floyd, “Pretty scary, eh, kids?”

The bovine tradition originated with a student humor magazine called The Purple Cow, first published in 1907 and inspired by a celebrated nonsense poem. In 1952, a campus radio contest provided the cow with her name. Ephelia is, of course, a feminization of Eph.

So Williams College has a football team named after an eighteenth-century benefactor, represented by a female purple cow named Ephelia, whose existence can be traced to a nineteenth-century nonsense poem.

 

Concordia College Cobbers — Kernel Cobb

Concordia College, a Division III school in Moorhead, Minnesota, calls its teams the Cobbers. Their mascot is Kernel Cobb, an enormous ear of corn with arms, legs, and a distinctly menacing expression.

How did this happen?

In 1893, students at Hope Academy, a rival Swedish Lutheran institution, taunted Concordia’s Norwegian Lutheran students with a chant about corncobs, lutefisk, and lefse.

The Concordia students apparently enjoyed being called Corncobs. Over the years, Corncobs evolved into Cobbers, and eventually the school adopted a giant anthropomorphic ear of corn as its athletic representative.

Kernel Cobb received his modern appearance in 2006. The college even gave him a little cousin called Niblet.

Their athletic slogan is “Fear the Ear!”

I didn’t make that up.

 

Loras College Duhawks — Dewey the Duhawk

The Loras Duhawks, representing a Division III school in Dubuque, Iowa, sound like characters invented by Dr. Seuss.

In 1924, the institution was called Columbia College, and its football team had no official nickname. After defeating Coe College, whose teams were known as the Kohawks, Columbia prepared to play the University of Detroit. A writer for the Detroit Free Press needed something to call the Columbia team in his preview. Since Coe had the Kohawks, he decided that the team from Dubuque should be the Dubuque Hawks, shortened to Duhawks. The name caught on, despite the school’s objections.

The following year, Columbia held a contest offering a five-dollar prize for a more original nickname.

There was no winner.

The Duhawks remained the Duhawks.

Thus one college’s athletic identity was essentially invented as a rebuttal to another.

The Kohawks and Duhawks still have an annual rivalry. The Coe College Kohawks defeated the Loras College Duhawks 35-14 in their American Rivers Conference football matchup on October 3, 2026.

 

University of Arkansas at Monticello Boll Weevils — Weezy the Weevil

Most universities prefer to name their athletic teams after dangerous predators. Arkansas–Monticello, however, settled on a destructive agricultural pest. The university’s athletic teams are the Boll Weevils, a nickname dating to 1925.

It’s not a particularly intimidating name, but the mascot more than compensates. His name is Weezy the Weevil. He seemingly has a penis for a nose, bulging eyes, and a toothy grin suggesting that he just escaped from an insane asylum.

 

 

Arkansas Tech Wonder Boys

Arkansas Tech University, a Division II school in Russellville, Arkansas, fields the Wonder Boys. The name dates to 1920, when the institution was still known as the Second District Agricultural School. On November 16, quarterback John Tucker led his team to a 13–0 victory over Henderson-Brown College. The next day, a sportswriter described the team as the Wonder Boys, and the nickname stuck.

The women’s teams were originally called the Wonder Girls or Wonderettes, but changed their name to the Golden Suns in 1975.

Neither Wonder Boys nor Golden Suns is especially easy to represent with a costumed mascot. Arkansas Tech’s solution was to revive an entirely unrelated tradition: Jerry the Bulldog.

Back in the 1930s, a university administrator named W.O. Young owned an English bulldog called Jerry, who regularly accompanied him to campus. The students adopted the dog as an unofficial mascot. In 2013, the university revived the tradition and introduced a new Jerry. Technically, Jerry isn’t the athletic mascot. He’s the university’s “campus ambassador.” And in 2026, Jerry Charles Young IV succeeded Jerry III. Yes, the school has a succession of bulldogs with Roman numerals. The whole arrangement seems to have been Jerry-rigged.

The biggest problem? By the time the cheerleaders say “Huzzah for the Second District Agricultural School Jerry Charles Young IV Bulldogs,” the team is already on the bus back to Russellville, preparing for its traditional rivalry against the snooty First District Agricultural School.

 

Southwestern College Moundbuilders

This may be the least sensible nickname origin story in the history of American athletics. Southwestern College, an NAIA institution in Winfield, Kansas, calls its teams the Moundbuilders.

In 1910, its students decided that the existing nicknames, Preachers and Methodists, weren’t sufficiently exciting. Since the campus was situated on a hill, somebody suggested Cliff-Dwellers. But one student argued persuasively that dwelling was a passive activity. The school needed a nickname suggesting action and accomplishment. So they chose Moundbuilders.

There was only one problem. They hadn’t built any mounds.

Their college happened to be situated on a natural hill. Apparently, the students thought that living on a geological feature entitled them to claim credit for its construction.

Seventeen years later, in 1927, Dean Leroy Allen finally decided that the Moundbuilders ought to build a mound. He instituted an annual ceremony in which students and faculty placed rocks on a growing pile. The tradition continues to this day.

In other words, Southwestern named its athletic teams after a hill the students hadn’t built, then waited seventeen years before constructing a pile of random rocks to justify the nickname. It’s college football’s most leisurely infrastructure project: announced in 1910, construction begun in 1927, and still in progress almost a century later.

Heidelberg University Student Princes — Siggy

Heidelberg University sounds like a school where the professors compare dueling scars, but this one is in Ohio. Nonetheless, it calls its Division III athletic teams the Student Princes.

The name comes from Sigmund Romberg’s 1924 operetta The Student Prince, which tells the story of a young German prince who falls in love with a barmaid while attending the University of Heidelberg. In the late 1920s, Heidelberg’s alumni director, Edwin R. Butcher, encountered an advertisement for “The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg” and decided that Student Princes would make a suitable nickname for the football team.

So they are named after a forgotten musical.

The women’s teams are also called the Student Princes. Evidently, nobody considered the Naughty Mariettas.

The mascot is Siggy, named after Sigmund Romberg himself.

Disappointingly, Siggy bears no resemblance to a consumptive Hungarian composer or a lovelorn German undergraduate. He’s a medieval-looking knight who apparently borrowed his helmet from Marvin the Martian and his face from that famous silent movie moon.

The armored appearance is particularly puzzling. The Student Prince of the operetta was a romantic young man whose principal interests were drinking beer and pursuing a barmaid. Presumably, the university decided that a sentimental tenor in a freshman beanie wasn’t quite the image it wanted leading its football team onto the field.

Washburn University Ichabods — Mr. Ichabod

Washburn University, an NCAA Division II institution in Topeka, Kansas, calls its teams the Ichabods. The name honors Ichabod Washburn, the nineteenth-century industrialist and philanthropist for whom the university was named.

The school’s mascot, Mr. Ichabod, may be the least intimidating athletic representative in the country. He’s a cheerful, well-dressed nineteenth-century gentleman wearing a top hat and frock coat, with a book tucked under his arm.

 

He looks like Rich Uncle Pennybags, the Monopoly Man, before he acquired his fortune. The original illustration was created in 1938 by graphic designer Bradbury Thompson, who intended the character to symbolize courtesy, kindness, and scholarship.

Admirable qualities all.

But not the ones you want in your defensive line.

I assume his response to an opposing player’s touchdown would be to tip his hat and say “I must compliment the fine young lad on his superlative execution.”

Let’s face it, that guy’s sports would be polo and croquet.

Washburn actually tried to toughen him up during the 1970s and 1980s. One version wore boxing gloves, while another had muscular arms and rolled-up sleeves. Eventually the school returned to the traditional gentleman scholar, who looks like he would be more comfortable at Buckingham Palace, exchanging witty barbs with Shaw, Wilde, Whistler and the Prince.

The Ichabods actually field a highly competitive Division II football team, but you’d never know it from the mascot.

Ohio Wesleyan Battling Bishops — The Fighting Clergyman

Ohio Wesleyan University, a Division III school in Delaware, Ohio, calls its teams the Battling Bishops. The nickname was adopted in 1925 after a contest sponsored by a campus journalism fraternity. It reflected the university’s history of producing Methodist bishops. The mascot is an angry-looking bishop wearing red religious attire. He looks like Notre Dame’s mascot after a brutal bar fight.

Remarkably, Ohio Wesleyan doesn’t have a monopoly on this name. North Carolina Wesleyan also calls its athletic teams the Battling Bishops. A game between the two institutions would sound less like a football contest than a hotly-disputed conclave where they create white smoke after determining a winner. (Yeah, I know. Wrong religion.)

Delta State Statesmen — The Fighting Okra

Delta State University, a Division II institution in Cleveland, Mississippi, officially calls its athletic teams the Statesmen. It sounds like they would prefer to determine the game’s outcome with reasoned debate rather than the controlled violence that is football.

Students apparently recognized the problem. They wanted something tough and nasty, and it had to be green to match the school colors. Somebody suggested that nothing was tougher and nastier than okra, so beginning in the late 1980s, they developed an alternative mascot: the Fighting Okra. It’s a large green vegetable wearing boxing gloves, with a scowling expression suggesting that it has committed numerous acts of violence against other members of the produce department, possibly including angry corn cobs.

The unofficial mascot became so popular that the university ultimately embraced it, even while retaining the official Statesmen nickname.  Both mascots attend the games.

Erskine College Flying Fleet

Erskine College in Due West, South Carolina, plays Division II football under the nickname Flying Fleet. This is probably the only football team named after an enema, now that the University of Toledo has dropped the Toledo Toilax name to become the Rockets.

Jokes aside, the school has nothing to do with either constipation or naval aviation. In 1929, sportswriter Carter “Scoop” Latimer (my personal spirit animal) admired Erskine’s speedy passing attack and described the team in terms that produced the Flying Fleet nickname. The institution eventually adopted it.

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What makes these nicknames particularly entertaining isn’t merely their absurdity. It’s the tortured logic behind them.

The Moundbuilders chose their name because they lived on a mound they hadn’t built.

The Duhawks were named by a sportswriter who wanted something resembling the Kohawks.

The Cobbers embraced an insult from a rival school and turned it into an ear of corn.

The Ephs have a purple cow named after a dead colonel.

And the Ichabods are represented by a nineteenth-century gentleman who looks as though he would consider football an unfortunate breach of etiquette.

Somewhere along the way, college athletics acquired the notion that every team needed a ferocious nickname and an intimidating mascot, but college football already has enough Tigers, Wildcats, Wolverines and Eagles. I suppose there’s enough room for a few purple ruminants, angry vegetables, overgrown insects, clergymen, and gentlemen in top hats.