Here's the true story of how UC Irvine adopted the nickname Anteaters.
What is an anteater?
Giant anteaters, or just "anteaters," are among the most threatened mammals in Central America, according to National Geographic. Anteaters can weigh anywhere from 40 to 140 pounds, from head to tail they can grow to about 85 inches long (about seven feet) and they eat insects.
Former UC Irvine student government officer Jim Breslo told the Los Angeles Times, "The anteater is not threatening, but if he is attacked, he will fight to the death. As UCI students, we're all anteaters. People might think it's embarrassing at first. But by the time they leave, they're proud of it."
Do any other schools have the nickname 'Anteaters'?
There is only one Anteater mascot among NCAA Division I schools and it belongs to UC Irvine.
In 1989, former UC Irvine marketing director Carl Herrman told the Los Angeles Times, "My philosophy is [that] a place should have its own personality and a mascot helps to do that. We're the only anteater as far as we know. We should stand out from the menagerie."
Where did the nickname 'Anteaters' come from?
Like many college mascot origin stories, the nickname "Anteaters" involved a student vote.
Some of the other options on the ballot?
Bison. Seahawks. Centaurs. Toros. Roadrunners. "None of these."
But the more interesting aspect to the school's nickname and mascot is how "Anteaters" ended up on the ballot in the first place.
Water polo players Pat Glasgow and Bob Ernst, who were on UC Irvine's first water polo team, are credited as the students who proposed the nickname after – as one version of the story goes – they had taken a liking to an anteater in a comic called "B.C." designed by Johnny Hart, according to UC Irvine's website. "B.C." features caveman-type characters, along with dinosaurs, ants, and yes, an anteater, among other animals. It is still in circulation today, although thanks to the drawing of Mason Mastroianni, after Hart's death in 2007.
A blog published on UC Irvine's libraries website presents a slightly different story, saying that Glasgow thought of a potential anteater mascot "as he sat in the sun, working as a Newport Beach lifeguard" in the summer of 1965. "It wasn't an epiphany," Glasgow said later, according to the school. "I just had a thought – Irvine Anteaters. It just rolled off the tongue."
NCAA.com spoke with Audra Eagle Yun, Head of Special Collections & Archives at UC Irvine. "Well, it's a little bit mixed because the different interviews they've had with the students who kind of pushed for it, apparently one of them was a lifeguard and it kind of just came to him," Yun said. "He didn't know why, but it was probably from the comic strip and ultimately, that was the image that they started pushing."
"That was the only popular representation of the anteater in that time," she said. "It was a very popular comic strip at the time."
That fall, Glasgow and fellow dorm residents Schuyler Bassett, and Bob and Bill Coleman, handed out anteater buttons, including one design based off of the Playboy logo (shown below), and started "B.C."-inspired cheers, such as the following: "Give 'em the tongue, give 'em the tongue, give 'em the tongue, where? Right in the ear, right in the ear, right in the ear, Zot!"
Ernst and Glasgow, along with the "creative marketing genius of fellow student Schuyler Hadley Bassett," campaigned for the Anteater on campus, according to the university. During move-in day at their dormitory, Glasgow and Ernst reportedly welcomed all the students and campaigned for the Anteater mascot, saying things like, "You know what the mascot is don't you? An Anteater. You better believe it."
According to the Los Angeles Times, there was an informal student poll during the all-university dance in October 1965 and Anteaters won.
UC Irvine's athletic director at the time, Wayne Crawford, told the Los Angeles Times, "I liked Seahawks and one other, Bearacudas [sic]."
Renderings were made for several mascot options. Here's the sketch of mascot for "Explorers," courtesy of the UC Irvine Libraries.
"Selecting your mascot means a lot more than meets the eye," Crawford said. "For one thing, it should be something that will not become an object of derision. I heard one suggestion for the name 'Anteaters.' You can imagine what would happen to that. Newspaper headlines have to shorten everything, so you have to be careful from that standpoint.
"Radio and television announcers don't like to get tangled up on tricky pronunciations. Finally, your mascot must lend itself to a good rousing cheer."
However, Crawford told the Los Angeles Times to not bet on his favorite candidates – Seahawks and Bearacudas. Crawford had been the athletic director at UC Riverside when the university chose "Highlanders," even though Crawford like "Bearcats."
Soon after the informal poll, UC Irvine's administration "aired its disapproval," according to the Los Angeles Times, which only emboldened the pro-Anteaters students.
"While the final selection has the potential of either making or breaking the university image, there are no guidelines to direct the students as they meditate upon their prospective mascot," the L.A. Times reported.
At UC Irvine water polo matches, where Ernst and Glasgow played for the university, students chanted "Zot!" – a sound that the Los Angeles Times noted was the sound of the anteater's tongue in the comic strip. "Students expect 'Zot' to be carried on into basketball and be shouted when Irvine gets the ball and repeated, 'Zot, zot, zot' as the team peppers the basket," the Los Angeles Times reported on Oct. 24, 1965. Sports Illustrated referenced UC Irvine's new cheer in an issue published on Nov. 8, 1965, helping the Anteaters go mainstream.
Today, the campus email is called "Zotmail" and there's a chain of convenience stores called "Zot 'n Go."
Thanks to a student vote on Nov. 30, 1965, "Anteaters" officially became UC Irvine's nickname, receiving 559 of 998 votes, or 56 percent. It needed 51 percent to win.
It may come as a surprise that the second-leading vote-getter was "None of these" with 121 votes.
"The election confirmed what most everybody had suspected for weeks – that 'Anteaters' would win," the Los Angeles Times reported, however a 1989 Los Angeles Times story called it "a rigged election."
"No," Yun said, laughing, when asked if she has heard anything about some election day shenanigans. "But the circumstances of the vote, right, who conducted it and things like that, that's not clear to me. I can't say one way or the other whether that was a situation or not."
The following story was published in the Los Angeles Times on Nov. 30, 1965. "At long last, UC Irvine has made one of the most momentous decisions of its young life," the Times reported.
Even after the nickname became official, there was still push-back against it. A United Press International newspaper write story editorialized that it was a "nickname that would dismay any coach." The story also called names like Centaurs and Seahawks "more conventional choices."
Crawford, UC Irvine's athletic director, told the UPI: "Actually, I'm not too much in favor of it, and I'm skeptical about the name as a permanent thing."
Well, 55 years later, Anteaters appears to be pretty permanent. "A mascot can either be an asset or a liability," Herrman, the former marketing director, told the Los Angeles Times. "We think there's no end to the things we can do with our anteater. It's an affectionate character. Everyone loves it. No one has yelled, 'Stop it with the anteaters already.'"
Years later, Glasgow, who's credited with originally proposing the mascot, said, "I hope people enjoy the uniqueness of the Anteater. It wasn't done in jest or to make fun of the university system, it was just an antihero of the time."