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.

Facebook is less particular about their hiring practices, while still being particular.

Potentially an executive at Facebook.

Investment banking.

Law.

Consulting firms.

A small handful of other professions.

Does your mom or dad wear a monocle or own a Bentley [but only with a man servant behind the wheel]? Did your grandfather have a closet full of top hats and smoking pipes? Do you know the elderly nanny that raised you better than your mother and father?  Does your name sound like a piece of furniture from Pottery Barn? Congratulations! You won the life lottery, and odds are you're employed in a small segment of career fields that desire such a background.

Facebook once operated similarly as well. As a smaller, promising upstart years ago born of Harvard's bosom, Facebook focused on hiring from a pool of candidates largely out of Ivy League schools, with the occasional Stanford thrown in for good measure. But today, as powerful companies focus solely on pedigree regardless of ability, the pool has drained thin. Very thin. This has led Facebook to expand their own talent pool search.

"We recruit from three hundred schools," Facebook vice president Janelle Gale mentioned at a San Francisco educator conference recently, all while shuffling her abacus and looking to be awarded a gold star. "We want to hire people who’s need to learn is greater than their need to be right," Gale said. What does that even mean? I don't know, but it's exciting in its ambiguity!

"We want people who are open and receptive. We want to make sure people are in jobs they are good at and enjoy," she continued.  People who are open and receptive and willing to accept being wrong when told so? Sounds like me as a bagger boy at a grocery store when I was fourteen. Where do I sign up?

Gale never specifically detailed the alleged three hundred schools Facebook recruits from, but Forbes analyzed LinkedIn's searchable database and found "at least 40 Facebook employees attended Arizona State, while nearly as many hail from Cal State, Chico. The University of Oregon has at least a dozen alumni at Facebook; Texas Tech can count six."

That's a steep drop off. Texas Tech counts six and we're only four schools into counting. Incuding the Ivy League and a handful of other overly connected schools, we still have a list of roughly 280 schools to flesh out. So how thin is this Facebook job search?

This is all related to what Lauren Rivera wrote late last year in the Harvard Business Review, studying how elite corporations have an incestuous relationship with elite schools, creating a cycle of elitist entitlement. "[Elite professions have] on-campus “school lists” [with] two tiers, based largely on prestige," Rivera notes. "So even before applications are received, employers allocate jobs based on alma mater, skewing opportunities toward (and against) students from particular campuses [...] This leaves most students from nonlisted schools out of the game."

Phew. At least we now know Facebook's hiring ambiguity wasn't done out of nobility but just pure necessity. The plebeian masses thought they might have a chance for a second, and that can't happen.

Bowdoin College has the best college food! (Eh?)

Fun Fact: Moody looking polar bears don't exist in Maine.

I'm not even certain what this means. How is this judged? Are Michelin Stars assigned? I don't dine at any college establishment unless two Michelin stars are given. WHERE IS THE AMBIANCE, STANFORD??

The Princeton Review claims that little itty-bitty Bowdoin College in rural Maine has the best campus food for any university. Bowdoin has a strangely strict acceptance rate for students, too, and apparently has a similar standard for food. Because when you're in the middle of nowhere, nothing woos the intellectual elite quite like quality dinners and an abundance of moose.

Number two on the list? UMass Amherst.

Food is apparently so wretched in New England that college meals tastes like French cuisine. Très chic!

Nike co-founder gives $400 million to Stanford.

Stanford University had an endowment of $21.5 billion at the end of the 2014 fiscal year, or an estimated $22.25 billion through 2015. It's all a matter of which statistic you choose to look at. But what's $750 million amongst friends?

Today, Nike co-founder Phil Knight announced he was donating $400 million to his former school (he attended Oregon for his undergraduate degree) in order to create the Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program, which will pay for roughly 100 students to attend Stanford and work toward global issues.

"The Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program brings the very best students from around the world to study at Stanford in any discipline they're interested in, and helps prepare them to be world leaders," Stanford President John Hennessy says.

The issue here is money. A school with one of the largest endowments in the world probably doesn't need another infusion of $400 million to its coffers for relatively nondescript reasons. Secondly, what does the scholarship actually mean? No, if we pull ourselves back from the immensity of such a donation--really--what does it mean?

"We will bring together outstanding, courageous scholars to benefit from Stanford’s innovative educational environment, who then go on to lead governments, businesses, nonprofits and other complex organizations and develop creative solutions to effect positive change." So says a statement from the school.

Courageous? But--how? How do you know it will be positive change simply because they studied there free? And--again--courageous? Courage is having your limbs blown off in war, not studying nondescript matters at Stanford for free.

It's a wonderful statement of nothing. It means nothing. It uses wonderfully polysyllabic words to make the whole situation sound important--but what's the litmus test? Those lucky enough to attend Stanford will already have a pedigree few others will ever have. But what do they accomplish with such a nondescript scholarship?

What they accomplish might be worthwhile, but is nothing courageous.

A new college ranking says your best bet is to go to...CUNY Bernard M. Baruch College?

A ranking of 900 colleges and universities by a company called CollegeNet focused not on prestige, but on how much bang for your buck you get for attending the institution. Specifically, how well do various places of higher learning provide improvement on economic mobility and how affordable are these schools to families of disadvantaged financial means?

The top ten schools according to CollegeNet are nothing remotely close to those found in the Princeton Review or U.S. News and World Report's annual listings.

CollegeNet's ten are (with U.S. News and World Report's ranking as comparison):

And where do U.S. News and World Report's top five colleges and universities rank on CollegeNet's social mobility index?

I think we all kind of knew on some level that what's-its-face school...hold on, let me look it up again...uhh...CUNY Bernard M. Baruch College was where we all dreamed to go.


Ranking Graphs: CollegeNet, U.S. News, via Yahoo

Today in Google Doodle homages to dead writers...

Google creates Doodles for damned near anything, yet for a company based in northern California, it has a surprising dearth of doodles related to California-esque things.

Today, a Doodle is bestowed upon John Steinbeck, son of Salinas, CA, who would have celebrated his 112th birthday. The interactive Doodle relays quotes from five of Steinbeck's books--The Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row, Of Mice and Men, The Pearl, and Travels with Charley.

Says Charley:

"We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us."




The Los Angeles Times would also like you to know Steinbeck was a college dropout. Because, you know, why the hell not?

Stanford University sent a recruiting letter to Tiger Woods when he was 13-years old.

Business Insider has the photo of the letter, which apparently resides at Nike's world headquarters along with other Tiger Woods memorabilia and trophies.

Stanford's golf coach, Wally Goodwin, sent the letter to the then 13-year old as a means to get a jump on the competition and offer some sage advice.

"Here at Stanford I am finding it is never too early to get the word out to you exceptional young men," starts Goodwin, before getting weird, odd, and/or creepy.

"In your best interest, you should strive to achieve a 3.6 or above GPA in your sophomore, junior, and first half of your senior year [at high school]. Freshman year is not really considered."

Hear that, kids?! It's okay to screw around your first year in high school! Any other tips, Wally?

"[Y]ou should know right now that what Stanford looks for is a high level verbal score on the SAT. Now, boys are more inclined to get higher scores on the math part of the test, and girls do better in the verbal...but Stanford is a verbal university."

So 1989 is the last time a university cared about an English program. Good to know.

"I coached at Northwestern University prior to coming out here...Northwestern was a math oriented place.  This is verbal!"

So verbal even the golf coach won't shut up about it.

"It takes SAT scores of 1200 or so. Athletes get a bit of a break."

NO! My assumptions of education equality are dashed! Dashed!

"Stanford plays for and wins more national championships than any other university in the country, and we do it with highly talented scholastic kids, not the other kind."

Just make sure it's a verbal talent, kid.

"I am looking for a few tough kids. Winners!"

It's just like the Marines, except with putters.

"The golf facilities here are exceptional, with a glorious golf course."

Stanford has a golf course? No--really--they have a golf course? Thank goodness that alumni money went to build a golf course instead of paying the tuition for a smart, yet poor kid who can't afford to attend Stanford.