Of the current 134 FBS teams, three will take the field this fall using ‘Panthers’ as its nickname. Those three teams are located in three different major U.S. cities and play football in three different conferences: Pittsburgh (ACC), Georgia State (Sun Belt), and FIU (CUSA).
At FIU, the current iteration of the Panthers mascot dates back only to 2010, but its origins go back much further. Before the school announces a possible change to its nickname after signing a naming rights and sponsorship agreement with Pitbull, let’s look at how Florida International University came to be known as the Panthers.
Who (or What) Is the FIU Panthers’ Mascot?
A young university by comparison to its opponents in Conference USA, FIU did not introduce a mascot for its athletics program until 1973. That is when the University Nickname Committee began soliciting ideas from both faculty and students to represent what was then only five sports teams — soccer, baseball, golf, tennis, and wrestling.
Judy Blucker, a founding faculty member at FIU (and later head coach of women’s volleyball and softball), suggested combining two contenders — “Suns” and “Trailblazers” — from the list of ideas to make “Sunblazers” as a potential option.
After a university-wide ballot, the winner was announced and the FIU Sunblazers were born prior to the start of the 1973-74 academic year.
FIU was still a NCAA Division II institution without a football program at that time. It was not until the school hired former NFL quarterback Don Strock as Director of Football Operations in 1999 that the foundation for a team started to materialize.
In 2002, FIU was placed in the Division I-AA (now FCS) level as an independent team, with Strock as its first head coach. Despite three consecutive losing campaigns, FIU moved to Division I-A (now FBS) in 2005 to become, at the time, the fastest school in college football history to reach the highest level of the sport.
Why Is FIU the Panthers?
Ultimately, FIU retired the Sunblazers name and mascot in favor of the Golden Panthers in 1987, just prior to its transition from Division II to Division I and before the formation of its football program.
With that came the birth of Roary the Panther who has patrolled the sidelines of FIU home games while hyping up Panther spirit since October 1987.
The Golden Panthers nickname was shortened to the current incarnation of just Panthers in 2010. The mascot was inspired by the Florida Panther, an endangered species endemic to the Everglades.
Whether for nostalgia or curiosity, it is not uncommon for FIU fans to dress like a Sunblazer at football games to honor the school’s first mascot.
That became even more apparent when the team reached nine wins in a season for the first time in program history under Butch Davis in 2018.
Yet, unless Mr. Worldwide has other ideas, the FIU Panthers will endure and represent the university for years to come.
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