The Weird History of College Mascots: Stanford University really is afraid to make a decision and stay with it.

Some colleges have perfectly boring mascots with no history outside a public relations-approved cartoon character. Other colleges have histories--often weird--behind their mascots. This is where we recount the oddities.

Today:  Stanford University and their inability to decide upon much.

For a university that is so discerning to decide who joins the student body, Stanford University seemingly can't decide much else.

You know that person at a restaurant who can't decide whether they want steak or fish? That's sort of like Stanford. Let's explain:

Shortly after the university opened its doors in 1891, the school's color was going to be gold. This was quickly abandoned after a school assembly then chose cardinal. (Don't simply call it red. Stanford folks will wave an "Oh, hell no!" finger in your face if you call it red.) Local sports reporters gravitated toward cardinal whenever reporting on the university's football team, so the color stuck.

Woooo! Feel the excitement!

Choosing an official mascot became a larger problem though. Indeed, for the first 40 years of the school's existence, they never adopted one.

By 1930, seemingly at random, Stanford chose to call themselves the Indians. Their own website explains that--uhh, well, uhh, funny enough--they have no explanation for how Indians was chosen. For one of the world's supposed elite universities, it seems to have trouble keeping track of its own history. Their best guess is that--perhaps--since rivals at the University of California-Berkeley chose to be called the Bears, Stanford chose the Indians.

If you're asking what's the correlation between bears and Indians--(((shoulder shrug)))--your guess is as good as Stanford's.

Good guess.

By 1972, through student activism, the school's mascot of the Indian was replaced because of concerns over cultural insensitivity. As a result, Stanford started looking for a new mascot. Huns, Sequoias, Trees, Cardinals, Spikes, Railroaders, and Robber Barons were all proposed. Yes--the Huns. The same nomadic people of the 4th, 5th, and 6th century made popular by Attila the Hun. That's a man who really got a party started.

All proposed ideas were rejected, including Huns. But for a school that most recently charged $51,354 for tuition and fees, the idea of Robber Barons as a mascot feels like a missed opportunity.

Six years later, in 1978, students proposed the mythological griffin (lion and eagle hybrid) as a mascot. The university rejected that as well.

Sort of like a Harry Potter mascot, but less lame.

Instead of a griffin, Hun, or Robber Baron, Stanford spent the duration of the decade going by the nickname of Cardinals. Specifically, they meant a pluralization of the color, NOT the bird. Yes, the cardinal bird is cardinal red, but Stanford was determined to be known by color only, yet plural. In 1981, the university's president officially adopted the color cardinal as representation of the school's athletic teams. A color as nickname, but not a mascot? Pluralization of colors? These are the sorts of philosophical debates you never imagined having.

This bird wants to know why Stanford be hatin'.

Meanwhile, the university's student band adopted a tree as their mascot. Not just any tree, but a very specific 1,000-year old Sequoia named El Palo Alto which is located in--you guessed it--Palo Alto, CA, where Stanford calls home. No one said anyone was terribly creative here.

Still, the university refused to adopt the tree or the band's interpretation of El Palo Alto as mascot, because apparently a tree is too crazy as a symbol. It's no Hun after all. Yet, the band still uses a fairly frightening wide-eyed looking tree as their mascot, where it remains running around the sidelines of football games and confusing generations of students as to why a costumed tree exists in the first place.

Oh, Jesus, the tree is loose again.

Today, Stanford goes simply by the singular Cardinal--the color, not the bird--as its nickname, with no mascot, no representation to be had.

But down deep, when we look back at it all, we all sort of wish they called themselves Attila.