College Rankings: School Nicknames

By Don Varyu, Nov. 20, 2025

Timeout from Trump, Epstein, and politics--let’s talk sports!

This is the time of year when sports rankings are everywhere. The back half of the college football season and the beginning of the college basketball season overlap, generating endless Internet lists of who’s best--and who isn’t.

However, despite all those entries, no one talks about ranking teams from the all-important standpoint of their nicknames…and the ability to strike fear into the hearts of opponents. To illustrate, I’m choosing the nation’s pre-eminent sports conference, the Big Ten. (Yes, I know, the Big Ten now actually has 18 teams. But so what? Monkfish aren’t actually monks, are they?)

The selection of a nickname can be strange; sometimes illogical. For example, teams from the University of Alabama are called the Crimson Tide…and their mascot is an elephant. Go figure.

And the Ivy League—supposedly with the smartest students—fails miserably at nicknames. They field the “Big Red” (Cornell), and “Big Green” (Dartmouth)—really? I mean, red what? And green what? They’ve also got “Crimson” (Harvard)—but the same failure remains. All that brain power and these guys couldn’t retain focus long enough to move past obvious adjectives and add a necessary noun? Well, I guess if your goal is just to make a billion by manipulating numbers on Wall Street, you don’t really have to know how words work.

Anyway, let’s move on to the nickname power ranking. To repeat, my method is to judge on the basis of which confer actual advantage in competition. Which ones elicit trembling from opponents? . And to add some coherence to the Big Ten muddle, I’m grouping them by category.

Disqualifications

If something doesn’t exist, it can’t intimidate you. “Boys, we’ve got to go out there and give 110% today—that’s how we smash nothing!” You get my point. On this basis, the following two schools are officially disqualified.

18. Indiana Hoosiers. Ask anyone, even from Indiana, what a Hoosier is, and they all say the same thing: “ahhh…let me think about that for a minute….”  No, you can’t write this off to farm boy confusion--it’s because Hoosiers don’t exist.

17. Iowa Hawkeyes. Yes, there are hawks, and yes, they have eyes. But there’s no literal translation here to a living, or even mythical, thing. James Fenimore Cooper used the nickname “Hawkeye” for one character in his 1826 novel, The Last of the Mohicans. Thus, I say it would make more sense for Iowa to use the actual name of that character as its nickname. It would be so much more fun to root for the Iowa Natty Bumpoos.

Inert Object

16. Ohio State Buckeyes. Yeah, I understand, it’s the state tree. But come on. In a state where much smaller schools were inventive enough to come up with “Zips” and “Penguins” and “Flyers,” a tree is the best you could do? At the same time, I do admit that since the little buckeye nuts that fall from these branches are poisonous to humans, there is some intimidation factor going on.

Senselessly glorified little critters

15. Minnesota Golden Gophers. A little animal that lives underground, which is small enough to carry  around in your pocket—that really doesn’t cut it. But props for at least adding a little bling with the “golden” thing.

14. Michigan Wolverines. Like the school which appropriated its name, a wolverine presents as fierce…but recoil when confronted. To demonstrate, in the real world a wolverine is now an endangered species—being relentlessly pushed up into the arctic circle. “Retreat” is in the DNA.

13. Wisconsin Badgers. Like the wolverine but not endangered—yet. One species of the animal is known as the “stink badger,” which is kind of like the cousin you really hope doesn’t show up for Thanksgiving dinner.

The cliché cats

God, these are among the lamest  of all school nicknames. Even the lamebrains in the Ivy League have Lions and Tigers. Consequently, the following get no higher in the rankings because of a dire lack of imagination…

12. Northwestern Wildcats. Congratulations. There are more than 30 U.S. universities that call themselves “wildcats”. Yawn.

11. Penn State Nittany Lions. The lion is no more original than a wildcat, but the use of the “Nittany” modifier (a Pennsylvania mountain) at least leaves opponents in a state of geographical confusion.

The wider animal kingdom

10. Oregon Ducks. A duck is not fierce, but it can sort of fly and sort of operate under water, so it theoretically poses dual means of attack.

9. Maryland Terrapins. It’s a damn turtle! No, not at all scary…but when it recedes into its shell, you have to admit it’s playing world class defense.

8. UCLA Bruins. Soft, cute, and cuddly. But in the back of your mind, you know full well one day it’s going to be a grown-ass bear. But at this stage, harmless.

7. Washington Huskies. Is this a frightening breed? I don’t know. It’s pretty big…but also pretty, period. In any case, I’d be more scared of it than a baby bear.

Humans

Aha! Now, we move on to major intimidators: bipeds rule!

Pacifist Division

6. Nebraska Cornhuskers. Good grief. Yeah, I suppose some farmer who husks corn could figure out a way to be threatening—maybe fire up the old rotary tiller and come at you?

5. Purdue Boilermakers. I’ve never made a boiler, but they get the advantage here because I have to assume it requires more physical strength than husking an ear of corn.

Warrior Division!

This is it--we’re down to the final four. Each of these nicknames project some degree of human threat.

4. USC Trojans

3. Michigan State Spartans

If you managed to stay awake during mythology class, you might remember the ancient Greek Trojan War. The two sides listed above squared off in an epic battle that lasted more than a decade. Legend says the war began with a fight between several goddesses after someone  was snubbed by not being invited to a wedding. Then there was a golden apple thing. When the Spartan goddess dumped her husband for the cute young prince of Troy, it was game on. (You know, romantic plotlines really haven’t advanced a whole lot in 3,000 years.)

So, the Spartans declared war and held an early lead. But the Trojans were sneaky, hiding inside a giant wooden Trojan Horse to sneak into a Spartan enclosure. (In recent times, the name “Trojan” is associated with a different sort of protection for men also determined to safely sneak into an entirely different type of enclosure.)

Anyway, the Spartans won in the end, which pushes Michigan State ahead of the Trojans in the rankings. Head-to-head results matter.

2. Rutgers Scarlet Knights. Well, let’s face it: knights are cool. They dress up in all that heavy armor, jump on horses and charge, attempting to skewer each other with    their long lances. Admit it--that’s intimidating.

1. Illinois Fighting Illini. However, the Illini beat out the Knights to be #1. They also fought on horseback, but without the armor. They even disregarded guns when they became available to enemies. They knew they could fire off multiple arrows in the time it would take rivals to reload a musket.

You won’t find an “Illinois tribe” listed anywhere because no such thing ever existed. Instead, the Illini name refers to more than a dozen different Native American tribes. They  banded together to form a society of about 15,000 people. It spread from Lake Michigan all the way into Arkansas. Theirs was a thriving collective of agriculture, trading, and a form of representative government. Early French explorers said the word Illini essentially translated to “the man.”

Indeed.

(In conclusion, I want to assure you that this entirely rational and objective ranking is in no way affected by the mere coincidence that I am a graduate of the University of Illinois.)

Go Illini!

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