Missouri-St. Louis replacing Rivermen with Tritons

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- St. Louis may be earning a reputation for odd college mascots.

Saint Louis University has its Billikens. And if curators approve on Friday, sports teams at the University of Missouri-St. Louis will be known as the Tritons.

Triton is the seventh moon of the planet Neptune, discovered just weeks after the planet itself was found by astronomers in 1846. Triton is known even among planetary objects as an oddball -- it orbits in a retrograde fashion, in the opposite pattern of most celestial bodies.

Triton is also a name from Greek mythology -- god of the sea. Triton is usually portrayed as having the head and trunk of a man and the tail of a fish.

So is the new mascot a backward-orbiting moon or a man with a fish tail? Missouri-St. Louis spokesman Bob Samples isn't saying.

"We'll probably roll that out in the fall," he said.

Almost from the formation of the Missouri-St. Louis campus in the early 1960s -- when the state bought land that once housed a country club golf course -- the nickname Rivermen has been met with little enthusiasm by the student body.

The name came out of a student contest in 1965. But the Rivermen nickname was never formally adopted because so many students objected to it, Samples said.

Still, apparently by administrative decision, teams became known as the Rivermen in 1966.

Part of the problem is that as college sports evolved over the past four decades, there are now as many women's teams as men's. "Riverwomen" is an awkward nickname and even weirder as a mascot, Samples said.

A committee was first formed in 2003 to come up with a new mascot after a survey found nearly six in 10 students disliked Rivermen. Only a quarter of the students wanted to keep it. Still, no consensus was reached on a replacement and that committee disbanded.

Chancellor Thomas George persisted, and a new committee of students, faculty, staff and alumni formed last fall. Aided by a creative firm, the committee eventually came up with two mascot finalists: Tritons and Mudcats.

"Mudcats came in second because it confused people," Bryan Goers, chief justice of the student court and a member of the committee, told the student newspaper. "Is it a cat that's muddy? Is it a catfish?"

The committee and George agreed the name Tritons "embodies the qualities sought to serve as UMSL's mascot for the future," the university said.

The university's red-and-gold color scheme will remain unchanged, Samples said.

The nickname, while unusual, isn't one-of-a-kind. The University of California, San Diego features the Greek god version of the Triton as the mascot. Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla., is also home to the Tritons.

"It's not unique, but it's not common, either," Samples said. "That was one of the comments from students -- we didn't want to be one of 500 Eagles."

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