Vintage Vault Texas State Bobcats #4 - 8/24/26
From "The Normals" to the Bobcats — The 1921 Contest That Changed Everything
In 1921, the athletic teams at Southwest Texas State Normal College had a problem. They didn't have a name worth fearing. They were called "the Normals" — or sometimes "the Teachers" — which tells you everything you need to know about how seriously anyone took them on the field.
The administration decided something had to change. A campus-wide contest was announced — submit your best nickname for the college's athletic teams. Students, faculty, anyone with an opinion was invited to make their case.
College president Dr. C.E. Evans had already made up his mind. He championed the Bobcat — not because it was flashy or intimidating in the way a tiger or a bear might be, but because it was right. The bobcat was native to the Texas Hill Country surrounding San Marcos. It was cunning. It was ferocious. It survived on its wits in terrain that didn't give anything away for free. That was the kind of program Dr. Evans wanted to build.
The winning submission came from a student named Oscar Strahan. He would go on to become one of the most important figures in Texas State athletic history — coach, athletic director, institution. But in 1921, he was just a student who saw what Dr. Evans saw in the bobcat and put it on paper first.
The name landed immediately. No debate, no second-guessing. The Bobcats were the Bobcats from that moment forward.
For decades the mascot lived as an idea — a spirit, a name, a logo on a uniform. Then in 1964, at a homecoming pep rally, students gave it a face. They named the live bobcat mascot Boko. Nobody planned the name. Nobody voted on it. A crowd of students at a pep rally decided, the way crowds decide things — all at once and without ceremony. Boko it was, and Boko it has been ever since.
From "the Normals" to Boko. From a campus contest to one of college football's most passionate fanbases in Texas. A hundred years of Bobcat pride, started by a president who liked the animal's cunning — and a student who wrote it down first.
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