Ooh. I should have said “scholar athletes.” My bad.
Successful college and university sports teams (football and basketball in particular) are big fundraising draws…and that’s where the funny business starts. Good sports teams become a de facto fundraising mandate to keep the money flowing…and what, people cheat and cook the books to keep things moving? Like NO WAY! (way) I liken it to flag waving, people pay attention to outward signs of success rather than how the sausage is made. All the schools listed in the Made in merch have had corruption issues of one kind or another in the past because it’s very BIG BUSINESS. Add in sports saying, “if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying hard enough”, and there you go.
In any case, at least schools are starting to pay athletes…but big hairy lawsuits do that. Like US lobbying is simply institutionalized bribery…the new system of paying athletes simply shifts the corruptions and money laundering in new ways. And by golly, if a university is making billions off student athletes…they should pay them. Scholarships for student athletes are often mocked but if a school is making gobs of $$$, 4 “free” years of school (with a lot of restrictions) is a lob-sided deal if one sides makes billions.
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I’m happy to be left out of big time college sports…
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I’m betting it wasn’t either a sorority or fraternity member who came up with the idea, but rather a “booster” club.
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Love the Banana Slugs. There was an effort at Stanford decades ago to change the mascot name from “Cardinal” to “Robber Barons.” Didn’t catch on so to speak.
Maybe even especially the coaches at Penn State.
Yeah, that was the not-so-subtle point I was making.
I had a wonderful glass beer mug with the school crest that I received for putting in 4 years with the Volunteer Admissions Support Team (calling up students who’d applied, convincing them to attend). Then an idiot post-college roommate “borrowed” it and broke it.
Because our school mascot is so ridiculous (not the Banana Slugs), I have a T-shirt and a license plate frame with said mascot.
Aside from my old wrestling warm up, neither do I. My son will soon graduate UW-Madison. He’s not very “rah rah.” I don’t think he owns any associated merch.
My college mascot (Rangers) was this goofy looking wolf thing with a ranger outfit on. Naw, IIIII’m gooooooood.
Stanford has had an identity crisis ever since it gave up on Native American parlance.
The Gryphon (favored by the athletes)
The Tree (favored by the band)
The Indians (favored by rich alums, nevermind)
The Robber Barons (unacceptable to the BoTs, because it fit)
So, we got the Cardinal (the color, unacceptable to all).
I was all in on the Robber Barons, and jealous of UC Santa Cruz for the banana slugs. The color Cardinal is also kind of garish compared to the Harvard Crimson color.
ISTR that back in the late '60s or early '70s, at least part of Stanfurd’s football team was known as the “Stampeding Thunderchickens” or some such silliness. The D-line? O-line? Something like that.
When they get to the UCNT (University of California near Target), which I attended but from which I did not graduate, I might buy a set. As for my alma mater, I’m still trying to figure out how an Aggie is represented by a horse.
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Cal will always love the Stanfurd Band!!!
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My favorite memory of that era is knowing that John Elway never beat Cal in the Big Game. Not once in four attempts. That, and Kevin Moen will never have to buy a drink in an East Bay bar for the rest of his life.
Davis? Aggie = agriculturalist = farmer; most farmers have a horse or two?
https://stories.ucdavis.edu/stories/one-of-a-kind/gunrock.html
But yeah, I probably wouldn’t have wanted college-branded cookware even when I was in college 
Yes, but none of the farmers I know have horses. Most of them have a new F250 every couple of years, courtesy of favorable tax laws, so maybe that’s the modern equivalent.
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At the risk of offending Stanford alumni/alumnae, my father, his brother and sister, and many of their progeny went to “the Farm.” Every summer we would go to the Stanford Sierra Camp on Fallen Leaf Lake. I loved it. Years later my father rounded us up for another visit. Yikes. These people acted as if they were still in school: nightly lectures, healthy dining, pretentious wine talk. Give me a burnt marshmallow and camp mates who want to plan a hike and fishing in the high country, people willing to enjoy peanut butter from a tube.
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When I was an undergraduate at Chicago, they had 2 anybody-can-play soccer teams that played … each other. The Robber Barons and the Flying Bolsheviks. Plus a 50 piece marching kazoo band. I don’t remember a mascot.
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@Meekah Isn’t Phil the Phoenix the official U of Chicago mascot? At least that’s what I recall.
I married a Longhorn/Buckeye, who is now affiliated with Harvard, so the extent of the marketing doesn’t surprise me at all (although we draw the line at cookware).
I have affiliations with U of Chicago, BU (a cute Boston terrier), Mount Holyoke (a cute lion called Paws), and U of Illinois (formerly Chief Illiniwek but retired after much controversy; guess we’re just called the Illini now). Not much opportunity to buy stuff from these schools, except maybe U of Illinois if we lived in the Midwest.
