NSU’s proud history, tradition
Nevada Southern University shouldn’t turn its back on history.
In the early 1970s, black student athletes walked into then NSU President Don Baepler’s office and asked the school to change its mascot from a wolf, dressed in a United State’s Confederate uniform, to something more respectable. The supposed “rebel” president caved and changed the mascot the next season.
Emerson Marcus
How do you expect people to take you seriously NSU?
You are supposed to be an outlaw school that rebelled against the much better academically university in Reno.
NSU’s original mascot, Beauregard the Wolf, was supposed to be a sardonic shot at the state’s only four-year university. Nevada’s blue uniforms and Wolf Pack mascot gave NSU a chance to mock Nevada by placing a confederate flag emblem on the school’s helmets and using a goofy wolf as its mascot. The move was rather witty on the side of NSU, but all that wit was erased when Baepler altered its direction and led the school on a history-erasing slippery slope.
This rich history shouldn’t be hidden from the public. It begins in 1957, after a few Mafia-family high school students said they didn’t want their only in-state college option to be in Reno. The Nevada Board of Regents appeased the future Michael and Sonny Corleones and granted Las Vegas a satellite campus.
Education was dependent on the school up north, but that didn’t stop NSU from putting together an athletic department that preached confederate pride and easy scheduling.
The basketball program struggled to a 5-13 record in its first season in 1958, but gained key wins against the Nellis Air Force Base and Nevada’s freshman/sophomore team. The Rebels sub-500 record didn’t lead to a lack of confidence. After losses to Antelope Valley College and a 43-point loss to Dixie Junior College, the school regrouped the next season to go 13-8.
The football program kicked off in 1968 with an 8-1 record, but it slowly derailed after NSU stopped playing its early rival, Virginia School of the Blind.
In 1969, the Rebels made progress by gaining autonomy from Nevada. NSU was off and running like a proud bastard child whose mother considered aborting a few years before.
Baepler’s decision two years later to remove the confederate flag — simply a symbol for state’s rights — from the helmet surprisingly caused no outcry from the Las Vegas community. Baepler restarted Sin City’s rich eight-year-history to stay politically correct. Maybe NSU’s lack of valuing history caused coach after coach to cheat and student after student to fail in the work force.
So NSU, learn to embrace your tradition of rebelling and parading the confederate flag. It’s better than ranking in the last tier of U.S. News and World Report’s college rankings without any tradition at all.
Emerson Marcus is the Sports Editor at The Nevada Sagebrush. He can be reached at emarcus@nevadasagebrush.com.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 at 1:11 am and is filed under Sports.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Print this post
Email this post© 2008 The Nevada Sagebrush
