Rivals Pitt and Penn State share a mascot
Pitt and Penn State, the state’s largest and most visible schools, are divided by a gulf of cultural and physical differences far greater than the 135 miles that separate their campuses. Those differences have created a bitter rivalry, divided families and friendships and fostered animosity between people who have never shared a word or even a glance.
But within that rivalry, there’s a humorous bit of irony — as much as Pitt and Penn State fans ostensibly hate each other, they root for the same mascot.
Although they’re different in name, the matchup between the Panthers and Nittany Lions is an intra-species one. Biologically, both have the binomial designation of Puma concolor couguar, encompassing both the North American cougar and a now-extinct
population of eastern cougars that once lived in the northeastern United States. The cats are casually called a number of things, from cougar to puma to catamount to, of course, panther and mountain lion.
Though one of the mascots has a slightly greater proclivity for nudity — Penn State’s Nittany Lion sports just a neck scarf while Pitt’s Roc the Panther rocks a jersey sans pants — the differences don’t extend far.
“In some ways, they’re all synonymous,” said Henry Kacprzyk, the Pittsburgh Zoo’s curator of reptiles and Kids Kingdom.
It’s a fact that’s littleknown or overlooked by many who assume there to be some kind of difference.
“It’s the color,” Saira Awan of Avalon said this week when asked about the difference between the two. “The color is different from a panther. A panther is usually black. From what I understand, a panther is from the jaguar, leopard family and the Nittany lion is from the lion family.”
“A panther’s got a louder growl,” said Rick Schwartz of McKees Rocks, who was wearing a Pitt shirt in Downtown Pittsburgh.
Anthony Blefere, a 2009 Pitt grad, wasn’t quite sure what the difference was between the two.
“I would say that I need to watch National Geographic a little more,” he said.
The misunderstood connection between the two schools comes from what was once one of the few commonalities between the urban bustle of Oakland and the sprawling stillness of State College.
Until the mid-19th century, mountain lions roamed the hills and valleys of western and central Pennsylvania, measuring about 3 feet tall and 8 feet long, with powerful legs that allowed them to leap 15 feet high and 40 feet horizontally. Over time, though, their populations began to dwindle, largely at the hands of humans seeking to protect their livestock. In certain parts of the state, bounties were even placed on the animals.
That man-made intervention eventually took its toll. Mr. Kacprzyk said the last known mountain lion in Pennsylvania was killed in 1874 in Berks County, outside Philadelphia. In the time since, people have claimed to have seen mountain lions in the region, some even providing what seems like photographic proof, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, after extensive research, has declared them to be extinct.
Their disappearance means there is no way of knowing for certain whether there was a difference between mountain lions found in State College and those found in Pittsburgh. Any contrast, though, would have been negligible, particularly because the animals could have traveled between the two cities if they had the right motivation, such as a lack of food o rthe opportunity to breed.
“There were probably no differences that were discernible,” Mr. Kacprzyk said. “Nowadays, with genetic testing, it gets very detailed. They keep discovering new species. One from the central part of the state or eastern part of the state may have been somewhat genetically different from one on the western part of the state, but to people who lived back then, they looked exactly the same.”
Though it became extinct in the region nearly 150 years ago, the mountain lion has had an enduring role in shaping the presentation and branding of Pitt and Penn State’s athletic departments.
When Pitt changed its name from the Western University of Pennsylvania to the University of Pittsburgh in 1908, its athletic teams — previously referred to as “The Wups,” derived from the school’s acronym at the time — were in search of a new identity.
At a meeting of students and alumni in November 1909, Pitt adopted the Panther as its mascot based on a suggestion from a man named George M.P. Baird, according to the University of Pittsburgh’s website.
To Mr. Baird, the name was a natural choice. The panther was a fearsome creature once indigenous to the Pittsburgh area. The hue of its fur was close enough to the gold the school’s teams used as one of their colors. No other college had employed it as a symbol at that time. And, not to be overlooked, it was alliterative with the university’s name.
Scientifically, the Nittany Lion isn’t a separate subspecies of cougar, but it does have its own origin story.
In 1904, when Penn State’s baseball team traveled to Princeton for a game, Harrison D. “Joe” Mason and his teammates were shown a statue of a Bengal tiger, Princeton’s mascot. Searching for a retort to defend his mascot-less school, Mr. Mason spoke of the fiercest beast of all: the Nittany Lion.
The idea came to Mr. Mason after seeing a stuffed mountain lion, the kind once native to the mountains surrounding State College, on display at Penn State, according to a 2012 story from the Los Angeles Times. When he attached “Nittany” as a prefix, a reference to nearby Mount Nittany, the moniker stuck.
“Why not get for State College, Our College, the Best in all the Menagerie of College Pets, Our College is the Best of all, Then why not Select for ours, The King of Beasts — The Lion!!” Mr. Mason wrote in 1906 in The Lemon, a humor paper he helped found. “Dignified, courageous, magnificent, ‘The Lion’ allegorically represents all that Our College Spirit should be. So why not ‘The Nittany Mountain Lion?’”
It took time for the mascot to gain traction, as the lion didn’t make its first public appearance until the early 1920s. Even then, it was an African lion, one with a full mane, before it vanished briefly and reappeared in the 1940s as a traditional mountain lion.
Or, as others may call it, a panther. Just don’t expect too many of the 107,000 fans in Beaver Stadium on Saturday — most in blue and white and others in blue and gold — to find much harmony in that technicality.