- Will you consider this?

"Gryphons, Gorloks, and Gusties" is followed up by "Gorillas, Gators, and Greyhounds."

Stay here as we make this alliteration clear about a volume two fun facts tome.

(upbeat music) A homegrown Peorian's piqued interest in his alma mater's mascot back in the day and its nickname led to a first volume in the who, what, when, where, why, and how colleges and universities ended up with their so-called identities, and that led to a second book, this time about Division II nicknames and mascots.

Chris Pio joins us via Zoom to gab about "Gorillas, Gators, and Greyhounds."

Welcome, Chris.

- Hi, Christine.

Thanks for having me back.

Appreciate.

it.

- It's good to see you.

When you did Division III, it was over 400 schools, and now Division II, it's over 300 schools.

You have 700 schools' information going through your head.

- 700 and 300 and some let to go to finish out the NCAA, so I'm 2/3 of the way through.

- Oh my.

Well, do you get rattled at all?

How do you keep it all straight?

- I don't get rattled.

You know, I mentioned it when you were nice enough to have me on several months ago to promote the Division III book.

You know, it's challenging to try to find a way to say the same things, to tell the same basic story several different ways.

That's part of the journey is to learn about all the different nicknames, all the different ways that schools represent themselves on the field or in competition, and nobody does it the same way.

So it's easy, but it's hard at the same time, and there's a lot of information, like you said.

But fortunately, I'm pretty good with stats and facts and figures, so I've been able to keep 'em straight so far.

We'll see how things go.

- Well, you are a former athlete and coach and sports information director, so you always like a challenge.

You've always had a challenge.

So in this "Gorillas, Gators, and Greyhounds," you found out all sorts of things about the Division II schools.

Did you know that there were over 300 of them?

- I knew how many there were, but I didn't know much about 'em.

As I said, when we were talking about the first book, you know, I was a Division III athlete at Monmouth.

I coached there for 20 years.

That's where I grew up, and that's where I've stayed, in the Division III world, and so that's where I started the project, and the reception from alums and friends and others for the first book really gave me the enthusiasm and the energy to continue on with my project, which was to go through the NCAA division by division, and I didn't know much about Division II.

My brother is a Division II graduate from Pittsburgh State, the Gorillas, the lead name on the D II book.

He did the cover art for both works, and that's about all I knew from Division II.

So I went from from a group of schools that I was very, very, very familiar with to a group that I knew hardly anything about.

So that was part of my education was finding out more about a division, a group of schools, like you said, over 300 that I didn't know much about.

So it's really been a neat second step along the way.

And then hopefully a year from now, we'll be talking about Division I, and that's the group that everybody knows about because that's all the state schools and the major conference schools.

So I've gone from a group that I knew very much about to a group that I knew very little about and hopefully on the way to a group that everybody knows something about, - There you go.

- so it's been an interesting way of putting it all together.

- It is.

Well, first, let's talk about the origin of mascots.

Now, not all schools had mascots in the day, and when did mascots kind of come in, I guess, mainstream?

- Well, mascots have been around for over 100 years, some longer than that.

You know, athletics in colleges and universities started way back in the early 1800s.

The oldest Division III school is from 1742, but they didn't have athletics all the way back then, obviously, but as a way to give a school its own identity and to separate it from its rivals or its opponents, schools came up with different unique and entertaining ways to describe their teams.

And then mascots caught on probably in, oh, the early 1800s, mostly animals or people dressed in very crude costumes at that point, but mascots as we know 'em today, the people inside the costumes, the characters that you see roaming the sidelines are jumping up and down with the cheerleaders at a basketball game or just walking around campus, high fiving alums when they're back for homecoming, those costumes really took off in the 1970s when San Diego Chicken and the Philly Fanatic and some of the professional league mascots really took off.

And so the last, oh, you know, 30, 40 years, the world of mascots and those costume characters has really exploded, and so it's been interesting to follow or to document, to chronicle, the evolution of mascots, even at the same school, excuse me.

But overall, just how they've become part of mainstream American sports culture now.

- Hmm, well you say in your book, you're talking a little bit about division differences, so I, II, and III differences, and you said that mostly Division II, I think I got this right, they started out as normal school.

Like Illinois State University was Illinois State Normal School for a while, I believe, right?

- Yep.

Normal schools were just simply teacher training schools.

As education increased across the country, as the population expanded from east to west, the need for teachers obviously was it a premium, and so a lot of states established their own normal schools, and that's what a number of the Division II schools can trace their roots to.

Many of them were, were land grant colleges, and that was a legislative act of the United States Congress that was passed in 1862 signed by Abraham Lincoln.

That created state schools, agriculture and mechanical schools.

There are 30 HBCUs, historically black colleges and universities, that compete in Division II, and those schools obviously were established after the end of the Civil War in the 1860s and 1870s to educate African Americans, recently freed slaves.

So that's one of the subtle differences between Division II and Division III.

There aren't very many Division III schools in the Midwest where we're familiar with Illinois and Wisconsin and Indiana and Iowa because those schools were founded by settlers, were founded by churches.

The Division II roots are a little bit different, and so even though there aren't very many here in the Midwest in different pockets across the country, they are the majority, and Division II, even though it's the smallest group of schools in terms of overall number, it's the most diverse in terms of its geographical footprint.

So, you know, it's an interesting mix of schools with a slightly different origin, different story than the D III group for sure.

- Fascinating.

So at the back of your book, you have a glossary for all the different names, but most of the mascots are generally or majority are animals?

- I found that out.

Again, it's a smaller group than Division III, so the number's about the same, but the percentage is a little bit higher.

And so in going through all 300 of the Division II schools, it just struck me that a lot of them are animals.

You've got your common Tigers and Bears and Hawks and Cardinals, but you've got some really interesting unique singular nicknames, Jaguars and Gorillas and Boll Weevils and - Boll Weevils.

(laughs) - Javelinas and Cobras.

and so because of the unique variety of animals, I decided to make that the focal point.

You know, you mentioned my Division III book, the "Gryphons, Gorloks, and Gusties."

That title, that's three fictional names, fictional creatures.

I decided to focus on the real world, and I highlighted three alliterative real animals, gorillas, gators, - Well, - and greyhounds, - you also- - and so the animal theme- - You categorized.

You kind of went through and you categorized some things.

You really had to come up with some clever categories here, you know, objects, abstract, weather, and nature.

So it is diverse.

- There's so many different nicknames that schools have come up with, some that are very common, some that are very easily recognizable, some that have been changed over the years because of a variety of different reasons.

So I just tried to, when I had the first idea to write about the subject, was try to categorize them somehow, and so I came up with six or seven or eight different categories, and some of them are abstract.

Some of them don't fit into any category.

It's a very conceptual nickname or it's something that isn't easily represented by a physical object, and so the glossary I added to the book just as a way to try to put the 300 or now 700 names that I've discussed in the two books into different categories and lump them in with similar objects or similar groups, whether it's people or animals or whatever it might be.

- What was- - So hopefully, hopefully it's a little bit of a bonus for the reader because you go through from page one to the end.

It's easy to lose track, and so I put the glossary at the end just to, "Oh, I remember that," and then you kinda flip back and forth and see it for the whole.

- Just summarizing it.

Were there any surprises while you were writing this book in particular?

- The biggest surprise was probably, again, just the origin of Division II, the HBCUs, the state universities because there just weren't very many around here that I was familiar with.

So it's been, again, an education of sorts to learn about schools that I didn't know much about.

So wasn't really much of a foundation to start with, and it just kind of grew from there, and it became a really fascinating subject.

- And in the state of Illinois, or is it just in the area, we have only four Division II schools?

- There's only four in Illinois.

- Okay.

- UI Springfield in the state capital, Lewis in suburban Chicago, Quincy just north of St. Louis, and McKendree in Lebanon, which is the oldest school in Illinois, the oldest college or university in Illinois.

So there's just four of them.

There's one in Iowa.

I'm a resident of Iowa now.

Upper Iowa in Fayette is the only Iowa Division II school.

Wisconsin Parkside is the only school in the state of Wisconsin that competes in Division II.

So again, there just aren't very many schools around here that people know much about.

There are several in Michigan, there are few in Missouri, and you get down into the southern part of the country, the southeast and the southwest.

There's many, many more down there.

So again, it's kind of pockets of the country where Division II is the majority.

Just around here, there's just aren't very many.

So it hopefully kind of adds to a group of schools that a lot of maybe your viewers are more familiar with.

It just gives them a cross section of what is out there, and again, it leads into the bigger group of Division I schools that most people are more familiar with.

- Mm-hmm.

Well, let's get back to the nicknames and the changes of some of these mascots, and that was due to the NCAA rules changing in about 2005?

- 2005, the NCAA came out with a list of 19 schools that used what they considered abusive or hostile images, and most of it was based on Indian themes.

And again, a lot of Division II schools as the population of America progressed from east to west, displaced the Native Americans.

A lot of schools that were, again, land grant colleges from that Civil War type of legislation, those lands were taken or were secured from indigenous Native Americans.

And so, you know, it took over 100 years to realize that there's a group of people out there who are being insulted or demeaned by nicknames like Warriors and Braves and Redskins.

And so a lot of those schools that had their nicknames in that group have since changed because they're obviously very, very sensitive to cultural differences.

So that was a big shift in the early 2000s, and a lot of schools in Division II got caught up in that.

There are three that actually still have their nicknames that have been approved by- And how did they do that?

How did they escape that situation?

- They were just able to prove that the relationship between the school and the local tribe or the local native population was a positive one.

It wasn't demeaning, it wasn't insulting, it wasn't derogatory, and so if they proved their case well enough, and again, a couple Division II schools did that, a couple Division I schools did that, they were able to keep those Native American nicknames.

And obviously, you and I are well familiar with one of them, Bradley, right in our hometown of Peoria.

I'll talk about that in the D I book.

They were able to keep the Braves nickname, but they had to discard the mascot, Illinois the same way down in Champaign, Fighting Illini, based on a real life Native American tribe.

They kept a nickname, but they had to get rid of Chief Illini.

So, you know, how the mascot has evolved, in some instances, it parallels or reflects us as a society.

- Right.

Well, you said that you have a lot of animal names.

So you have a lot of Bears and you have a lot of Hawks, and you have a lot, and it's difficult to make each one just a little bit different.

So how did you approach that?

So let's say Hawks 'cause my one son went to Quincy University and he was a Hawk, but then there's another school who's another kind of a Hawk and another kind of a Hawk, so that you weren't repeating yourself and frustrating yourself?

- Yeah, there are are six, well, seven, if you count just plain Hawks like Quincy, but there are River Hawks, there are Seahawks, there are Skyhawks, there are Warhawks, there's Crimson Hawks.

So the fact that some schools chose to put a color adjective or fighting or some other nickname, some other adjective in front of their nickname, they did that just to separate themselves and to give them a little bit of a different identity.

It might be a color.

It might be another descriptive word.

So I try to mention that or make reference to that because that is what sets them apart.

There's a school in Missouri, Lincoln University, one of two Lincoln Universities in Division II.

They're the Blue Tigers.

Why the Blue Tigers?

Well, their school colors are blue and white, and the University of Missouri, the flagship state University of Missouri, they're the Tigers.

So how do we make ourselves different than the University of Missouri?

We call ourselves the Blue Tigers.

So there's Blue Bears.

There's Golden Falcons.

There's Golden Eagles.

There are 15 different schools that use golden something or other, Golden Suns, Golden Knights, Golden Bears, Golden Tigers.

So putting a word in front of a common animal name or a common name like Knights or Warriors just gives that particular school a slightly different identity.

And so when that was the case, that became part of their story.

Why do schools do that?

Why do they call themselves the Red Hawks?

Why do they call themselves the Thunder Wolves instead of just Wolves?

So I tried to incorporate that into each little school story as much as I could because that's part of their uniqueness.

- A lot of anecdotes.

All right, so the Yellowjackets of Montana, a bee or an insect.

(laughs) - A wasp, yeah.

Yep.

- And why did they choose that or do you have any idea?

- You know, interesting that Yellowjackets, not all of them, but a number of the Yellowjacket names, and there's a school in Virginia, Emory and Henry, that are known as the Wasps, even though- - That has a different connotation sometimes, too.

- Has a different connotation, but really, a number of those schools, those came from the colors of their uniforms.

They would wear yellow and gold striped football uniforms or socks in competition, and they looked like yellow jackets.

They looked like wasps.

They looked like insects swarming around the opposition.

So there again, it had nothing to do with the school's location or a figure in their history.

It had to do with the color uniforms that they were wearing.

So again, it's a situation where every school is different.

They might have the same nickname.

You know, there are a number of schools in Division II, as in all divisions, but there are a number of schools in Division II that have the same nickname, but they represent it with a different mascot.

There are others that have the same mascot that represent a different name, and, again, the glossary at the back helps to clear some of that up, but that's not all that uncommon that they might share a nickname but a different mascot.

You know, there are two schools that are called Hilltoppers, one down in Georgia and one in Texas.

One has a goat and one has a bear.

You know, there are two schools that use Mavericks, three schools that use Mavericks.

Two of them represent it with a bull and one represents with the horse.

So sometimes the same word has slightly different meaning.

University of Missouri St. Louis are the Tritons.

You would think Tritons as the demigod.

That's the case for Eckerd College down in Florida, but the University of Missouri St. Louis uses a newt because Triton, this is another trivial fact that I found out in doing all the school research, triton actually refers to a newt, a salamander that lives in the Missouri River - Who knew?

- right outside of St. Louis.

So again, same nickname but a different mascot.

One has a costumed salamander, and the other one has a Greek god with the flowing hair and the Triton and the- - With the Triton.

Right.

- All that.

Yeah.

- Right.

Well, your first book, "Gryphons, Gorloks, and Gusties," took you four years on and off to write, but this one you managed to put together in like about a year?

- About a year.

When I first came up with the idea and I first had the time or devoted the time to start the book, again, I started in the Division III universe, but it was a kind of a side project, a passion to something that I did in my spare time here and there, and it took me a while to put it all together.

I learned so much from that process, writing it, revising it, going through the self publication process that the second one didn't take nearly as long, and I actually started the second one before I finished the first one.

Just like I've started writing on the Division I stories, I'll send out requests for mascot photos for the D I book here within the next few weeks.

So I've already started the next one, and so I've just learned how to become more efficient, and I've learned to become a little bit more organized, and so it didn't take nearly as long to get the second one done.

And I think from here on out, I've got a pretty good routine as far as writing it, the format that I want to reflect, the format that I want to produce and publish.

So it won't take nearly as long to get to the finish line as it did the first one.

- Now people can get this on Amazon, right?

Is there any place else that they can get these books?

- Not right now.

They're just available on Amazon.

Again, I went through a self publication process, which is a little bit different than the traditional book publishers that you would think about, like going to Walden Books or Barnes & Noble or something like that.

I went strictly through Amazon because it allowed me to have a little bit more control on the timeline, a little bit more control on the finished product.

Certainly, it minimized cost.

So there were a number of factors involved, and I learned so much going through that process with the first book, with the D III volume, that the Division II book was just a matter of replacing the stories and the pictures and the Division I the same way.

So I've already started D I book.

Hopefully I'll get that out late summer next year in time for the '23, '24 school year, and then who knows where we will go from there?

I told somebody recently.

I had a friend of mine who said, "You oughta do a book on the weirdest high school mascots in the country."

I said, "Well, maybe someday, but I've got enough to write about right now."

I've got Division I and then NAIA, which is another subgroup of senior colleges, maybe junior colleges.

So whatever level of sports people follow, whether it's high school or college or professional sports, all of them have nicknames, most of them have mascots, and everyone has a different story.

So I've got plenty to write about.

It's been a really fascinating journey so far.

It's been a blast to read and to learn and to write about it, share it with people.

I hope they enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing about it and putting it all together.

- Well, the best thing is that you are still so enthusiastic about this because you just keep learning.

You have a thirst for knowledge, and you're sharing that knowledge and those fun facts and that trivia with other people.

- Well, thank you, and it is.

It's a passion that has kind of driven me.

I've been involved in college athletics for over 40 years and a lifelong sports fan.

Doesn't matter the season of the sport.

So just having that athletic background and that athletic knowledge has really kind of fueled the fire, and now that it's started, I'm just on a nice roll.

Again, the reception last year with the first book proved that there are people out there that enjoy the subject, and they like reading about it, and they like looking up pictures, and so it's really given me the energy to continue on for as long as it might take me.

Like I said, there's a wealth of material out there.

It's not the same old story over and over and over again.

It's new groups of schools.

It's new pictures.

It's something that I am passionate about.

I like to think I know a little bit about the subject, and I'm having a blast share in it with everybody.

- That's awesome, but, you know, Boll Weevils.

That would be a tough one.

Do they have an actual mascot or is that just their nickname?

- They actually do.

They actually do.

The boll weevil obviously is a predatory insect that damages cotton crops.

That was the staple market of Arkansas and the deep south in the 1920s, and that's where it came from.

1927, the athletic director at the University of Arkansas at Monticello picked Boll Weevils, which most people would think of in a negative light, - I do.

I do.

- negative connotation.

But it was so popular or not popular, but it was so prevalent that he decided to use that tag for their sports teams.

So they do have a costume weevil.

They do have a female version.

The female teams, the women's sports teams at Arkansas Monticello are known as the Cotton Blossoms.

So, you know, that's a school that has a different nickname for the men's teams and the women's teams.

A lot of Division II schools, - Right.

Interesting.

- especially those HBCUs that started up in the deep south, are Panthers and Lady Panthers, Bears and Lady Bears.

They just use the Lady Appalachian for their female squads, but Arkansas Monticello is a unique example.

There's another Arkansas school, Arkansas Tech.

The men's teams are known as the Wonder Boys, and the women are the Golden Suns.

- There you go.

- So there are a handful that have different nicknames for men and different nicknames for women.

But the Boll Weevil is one of the really weird one.

If you look up a lot of the books that have been written on a subject or every once in a while, you'll see a list of weird, odd college mascots that come out.

- That's one that shows up.

- The Boll Weevil is usually on that because people don't think of that.

The Banana Slugs in the Division III book is an example of that.

We talked about that last year.

So those odd ones are discussed just like the common ones.

- Well, you are very fascinating.

Thanks for sharing that.

So these books are available.

Thanks for being with us, all you in the audience, and hope you buy these books.

Have good evening, stay safe and healthy, and hold happiness.

(upbeat music)