Bruin Bear Mascot
“Rags”
A small fuzzy dog was found on the campus lawn in 1918 by a gardener. The gardener named the dog “Rags” and fed it some warm food in the cafeteria. “Rags” then became the first mascot for UCLA.
“Finally a Bruin”
Since Berkley had the golden bear, UCLA adopted the cub as its school mascot. When UCLA began to the win football games in 1920, they adopted a grizzly as a new mascot. But six years later, the UCLA grizzlies had to change their mascot because they joined the Pacific Coast Conference and the University of Montana was also known as the “grizzlies”. Berkley was known for both the Bears and the Bruins and in 1928 they offered UCLA the name of Bruins. The student council accepted the new mascot. Within days, the school newspaper, Cub Californian, was changed to the Daily Bruin.
“Real bears?”
That’s right… All of the mascots in the UCLA’s early years were live bears. The bears had trainers and they were brought to all the football games but they were too dangerous to have around spectators. A small Himalayan bear was UCLA’s mascot for a couple of months but then became too big. In 1961, alumni presented UCLA with the first “Josephine Bruin”, also a small Himalayan bear. Josephine lived in the backyard of the Rally Committee Chair. But when Josephine became too big for backyards, she was moved to the San Diego Zoo.
“Getting smart…costumed bears”
The first student mascots appeared in the mid-1960s. In 1967, the first woman mascot joined Joe at the football games. To this day, we can see Joe and Josephine Bruin dancing their paws off at our sports games!
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