HERO Sports is counting down the 100 days until the kickoff of the 2018 college football season on Saturday, Aug. 25, with daily trivia. Each day, from May 17 through Aug. 24, we'll publish one college football trivia question.
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The folks in Blacksburg had fun with, "What was Virginia Tech's nickname before 'Hokies'?" so let's keep it rolling with a drive up I-64 and I-77 to Huntington.
Before Marshall's official nickname became Thundering Herd in 1965, what were the school's athletic teams called before then?
While it's a fun answer, it's not a simple answer.
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Answer
Indians, Big Green, Boogercats
Marshall's team were originally known as the Indians, adopting the name in the late 19th century and using it for the early years of the 20th century. Around 1910, the school's green uniforms prompted the unofficial change to Big Green, though it was "criticized by some from its inception as being boring."
In the late 1920s, Huntington Herald-Dispatch writer Duke Ridgley referred to the football team as a Thundering Herd, inspired by a novel-turned-movie of the same name. Shortly thereafter, Huntington Advertiser writer Dug Freutel began using Boogercats, a reference to bogie cats, a Scottish animal that's "fleet, elusive, courageous." While Boogercats wasn't as widely used as Indians and Big Green, many fans and some teams occasionally used it.
Players, fans, alumni and locals went back and forth on the various names for decades until a 1965 vote — between Big Green, Thundering Herd and Rams — resulted in an overwhelming pick of Thundering Herd.
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