Long Beach State chooses new mascot: Sharks

[Still MIGHTY]

UPDATE: There was a little confusion as to what specifically changed. The choice of Shark is solely for the physical mascot representation. Prospector Pete was removed and replaced with a Shark (whose look will be developed over the next year). Long Beach State athletics will not rebrand and are still referred to as "The Beach" or "Beach Athletics," the baseball team is still "Dirtbags," and students/faculty/alumni/people associated with the school are still informally known as "49ers."

 

 

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ORIGINAL POST:

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(NOT OFFICIAL LOGOS, JUST RENDERINGS BY THE SCHOOL)

 

The long, drawn-out, partially unneccesary, and all-out confusing process of the Cal State Long Beach / Long Beach State 49ers / Beach / Dirtbags naming saga has come to an end. On Friday, the students chose, with a 53% vote, and the university president ratified the new university mascot:

 

Sharks

 

Sharks was chosen from a group of three finalists (Stingrays 22% and "Go Beach" 25% as the other two) that was chosen from a group of six semifinalists (additional options of Giraffes, Pelicans, Kraken). Long Beach State is well known for its Shark Lab, which has been featured several times during Discovery Channel's Shark Week. LBSU now enters a year-long development process to come up with logos and branding and all that fun stuff. (The above isn't official, just something the school provided.)

 

Six months ago, Cal State Long Beach / Long Beach State (they're still working on that. Officially its Cal State Long Beach, but they're working on the change as Fresno State and San Diego State have) officially remove Prospector Pete as the athletics/university mascot after years of criticism that he was offensive to indigenous peoples of the area, which Long Beach State actually has a great relationship with. Prospector Pete was chosen as a representative of 49ers, which is a reference to the founding of the school in 1949 and of course the Gold Rush, where again prospectors weren't great to the people whose land they were stealing, mining and blowing up for gold.

 

Since then, and even before then when I was a student there, they had tried to shift away from the 49ers brand and tried to emphasize "Beach" as their claim to being the only Division 1 school with the word "Beach" in the name. Thought it would be attractive to kids around the country. ("Come to school at The Beach!") The rallying cry for LBSU for years has been Go Beach. But trying to refer to the teams as "The Beach" or just "Beach" proved to be quite awkward. During this interim period, the athletic teams will be officially known as "Beach Athletics."

 

The only thing really unchanged by all of this, the LBSU baseball team has been and will continually be known as "Dirtbags." There's a long history to that name, and while on the surface sound derogatory, it came about as a term of endearment for how the team played on the bases in the 80s. Constantly stealing bases, laying out, diving and being covered in dirt. Also, FWIW, it's technically an informal nickname. It's not official. It's on jerseys and on merch, but technically they're still called officially whatever the school's mascot is.

 

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TL;DR - Long Beach State was the 49ers, removed Prospector Pete as physical mascot because the Gold Rush was bad to Native Americans. 49ers formally dropped as school tried to emphasize The Beach. Physical mascot choice put it to a student vote, and is now a Shark. Dirtbags remains unchanged. Students/Faculty/Alumuni/Organizations still informally referred to as 49ers.

[_DietDrPepper_]

Honestly the renderings the have so far aren’t even that bad. The LB logo needs to stay, clearly. But a “beach” script with the fin is great, maybe make the script a little less generic, but pair that with a fin logo, similar to that of the San Jose Sharks, I feel like there’s a lot of potential here.

[panthers_2012]

So does that mean their new fight song is the "Jaws Theme"?

[CaliforniaGlowin]

Nice!  But using "The Beach" sounds similar to CCU's phrase "Ball At The Beach".  They gotta be careful of that one.

[CaliforniaGlowin]

The problem with this name is the color choices are limited and predictable: dark blue, light blue, dark grey, light grey and teal.  If they really want to be bold and different they can do a bright turquoise accent color, but that's very unlikely.

[Red Wolf]

5 minutes ago, CaliforniaGlowin said:

The problem with this name is the color choices are limited and predictable: dark blue, light blue, dark grey, light grey and teal.  If they really want to be bold and different they can do a bright turquoise accent color, but that's very unlikely.

 

I bet the color choices are limited and predictable because the school already has colors.

 

[dfwabel]

11 hours ago, Still MIGHTY said:

 ------> -----> 

(NOT OFFICIAL LOGOS, JUST RENDERINGS BY THE SCHOOL)

 

The long, drawn-out, partially unneccesary, and all-out confusing process of the Cal State Long Beach / Long Beach State 49ers / Beach / Dirtbags naming saga has come to an end. On Friday, the students chose, with a 53% vote, and the university president ratified the new university mascot:

 

Sharks

 

Sharks was chosen from a group of three finalists (Stingrays 22% and "Go Beach" 25% as the other two) that was chosen from a group of six semifinalists (additional options of Giraffes, Pelicans, Kraken). Long Beach State is well known for its Shark Lab, which has been featured several times during Discovery Channel's Shark Week. LBSU now enters a year-long development process to come up with logos and branding and all that fun stuff. (The above isn't official, just something the school provided.)

 

Six months ago, Cal State Long Beach / Long Beach State (they're still working on that. Officially its Cal State Long Beach, but they're working on the change as Fresno State and San Diego State have) officially remove Prospector Pete as the athletics/university mascot after years of criticism that he was offensive to indigenous peoples of the area, which Long Beach State actually has a great relationship with. Prospector Pete was chosen as a representative of 49ers, which is a reference to the founding of the school in 1949 and of course the Gold Rush, where again prospectors weren't great to the people whose land they were stealing, mining and blowing up for gold.

 

Since then, and even before then when I was a student there, they had tried to shift away from the 49ers brand and tried to emphasize "Beach" as their claim to being the only Division 1 school with the word "Beach" in the name. Thought it would be attractive to kids around the country. ("Come to school at The Beach!") The rallying cry for LBSU for years has been Go Beach. But trying to refer to the teams as "The Beach" or just "Beach" proved to be quite awkward. During this interim period, the athletic teams will be officially known as "Beach Athletics."

 

The only thing really unchanged by all of this, the LBSU baseball team has been and will continually be known as "Dirtbags." There's a long history to that name, and while on the surface sound derogatory, it came about as a term of endearment for how the team played on the bases in the 80s. Constantly stealing bases, laying out, diving and being covered in dirt. Also, FWIW, it's technically an informal nickname. It's not official. It's on jerseys and on merch, but technically they're still called officially whatever the school's mascot is.

 

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TL;DR - Long Beach State was the 49ers, removed 49ers/Prospector Pete because the Gold Rush was bad to Native Americans, school tried to emphasize The Beach, put it to a student vote, and is now the Sharks. Dirtbags remains unchanged.sy

4

Formally, it is still California State University, Fresno as that is what one's diploma still says.  The 2012 change was to consistently brand the university as Fresno State, from admissions to alumni association.

OTOH, San Diego State is the school's formal name as is San Francisco State.  Those two, along with San Jose and Humbolt officially changed names names via Senate Bill 381 in 1974, two years after the CSU System was founded.

[MattMill]

 

No one brought up that they have their PYRAMID arena doubling as the A here. Genius

[The_Admiral]

They should have extrapolated Dirtbags across the entire athletic department. How about the Lady Dirtbags and their mascot is a girl who wears Cookie Monster pajama pants and smokes.

[Red Wolf]

7 hours ago, dfwabel said:

Formally, it is still California State University, Fresno as that is what one's diploma still says.  The 2012 change was to consistently brand the university as Fresno State, from admissions to alumni association.

OTOH, San Diego State is the school's formal name as is San Francisco State.  Those two, along with San Jose and Humbolt officially changed names names via Senate Bill 381 in 1974, two years after the CSU System was founded.

 

Little Rock followed the Fresno State path recently when they rebranded athletics while still being the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. At the academic level they've even changed the branding to emphasize the city by using UA Little Rock.

[WavePunter]

1 hour ago, Red Wolf said:

 

Little Rock followed the Fresno State path recently when they rebranded athletics while still being the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. At the academic level they've even change the branding to emphasize the city by using UA Little Rock.

I prefer when schools do this, particularly when they're smaller schools that are part of a larger system or have multiple similarly named schools.. for example: I prefer "Omaha", "Kearney", and "Pembroke" to "UNO", "Nebraska-Kearney", and "UNC Pembroke"

[Red Wolf]

3 hours ago, WavePunter said:

I prefer when schools do this, particularly when they're smaller schools that are part of a larger system or have multiple similarly named schools.. for example: I prefer "Omaha", "Kearney", and "Pembroke" to "UNO", "Nebraska-Kearney", and "UNC Pembroke"

 

I can get behind it in cases where it's readily apparent where the city is. Nebraska-Omaha simply using Omaha works for instance. I had even been yelling into the void about how UALR should switch to Little Rock for years before they changed. I don't think I could get behind the other two you listed because the cities aren't prominent enough. That said, I've also been telling nobody in particular that UAB should go by Birmingham for athletics, so maybe that wish will come true as well.

[FiddySicks]

Ehh. I’m conflicted a bit on this one. 

 

I wish they they would just have some courage and officially be the Dirtbags across the board. I know it’s more of just a baseball team thing, but damn if that isn’t a great nickname. 

 

I want to hate this so bad, but the Shark logos are actually pretty good. As long as they keep the traditional interlocking LB logo and Beach scripts for the baseball team, this is fine. 

[mjd77]

So we're now at the point where 49ers is an offensive nickname? SMH

[SFGiants58]

8 minutes ago, mjd77 said:

So we're now at the point where 49ers is an offensive nickname? SMH

 

I’d argue that this has more to do with it:

 

 

Since the NHL isn’t as high-profile, it’s less of a problem.

 

Major college programs should generally not share names with pro teams in the same state. This is why Portland Beavers should be immediately ruled out when talking about “MLB to PDX.”

[FiddySicks]

26 minutes ago, mjd77 said:

So we're now at the point where 49ers is an offensive nickname? SMH

 

Yeah this one is weird to me. I’ve legit NEVER heard this controversy. I guess I sort of get it, in the context that the entire west was a violent, dangerous, lawless place. But if we’re going that far with this, there are a TON of names we should probably take exception with. 

[razorback447]

8 minutes ago, Bucfan56 said:

 

Yeah this one is weird to me. I’ve legit NEVER heard this controversy. I guess I sort of get it, in the context that the entire west was a violent, dangerous, lawless place. But if we’re going that far with this, there are a TON of names we should probably take exception with. 

 

Give it time and it’ll get there. 

[WavePunter]

3 hours ago, Red Wolf said:

 

I can get behind it in cases where it's readily apparent where the city is. Nebraska-Omaha simply using Omaha works for instance. I had even been yelling into the void about how UALR should switch to Little Rock for years before they changed. I don't think I could get behind the other two you listed because the cities aren't prominent enough. That said, I've also been telling nobody in particular that UAB should go by Birmingham for athletics, so maybe that wish will come true as well.

It's not so much that the other cities are "prominent" or anything of the sort, but rather that it's not "UNC".. UNC is in Chapel Hill, and everyone knows it.. so I always feel like it's an attempt to piggyback on the name-recognition of "real" (insert major D1 institution name here).. not to mention, that specific example of UNC Pembroke actually used to be Pembroke State, so had they not changed, you would be stuck dealing with the not-so-prominent city name anyway.. it's not like Clemson is a bustling, prominent city.. it's a small farming town.. but we all know about it thanks to the university..

And, just to clarify, I'm speaking in terms of colloquial reference, athletics branding, etc.. I'm not suggesting any of these institutions officially change their name.. but again, using UNCP as an example, they have a wrestling singlet that has "PEMBROKE" across the chest in vertically-arched block letters (black text on metallic gold singlet), and it looks super sharp and feels the most like their true identity, at least to me.. they have several singlets, but only one uses the Pembroke-only moniker, which is a bit of a shame.. 

In general, I wish these schools would try to establish their own identity and represent their location, rather than just be another annoying acronym.. 

[The_Admiral]

20 minutes ago, WavePunter said:

And, just to clarify, I'm speaking in terms of colloquial reference, athletics branding, etc.. I'm not suggesting any of these institutions officially change their name.. but again, using UNCP as an example, they have a wrestling singlet that has "PEMBROKE" across the chest in vertically-arched block letters (black text on metallic gold singlet), and it looks super sharp and feels the most like their true identity, at least to me..

Oh, their wrestling-only name is the Tatankabags

[FiddySicks]

2 hours ago, razorback447 said:

 

Give it time and it’ll get there. 

 

I mean, if there’s a justifiable reason to make a change, then go for it. There’s really nothing wrong with embracing a better understanding of history within the context of current times. It’s why I was in favor of the Wahoo change and think the Washington Professional Football Team should make wholesale changes. But the 49ers? Knowing California history as well as I do, I find that to be a bit of a stretch.