Sports Poets Society

BLUE RIBBON ANALYSIS BACKCOURT B  FRONTCOURT C  BENCH/DEPTH C  INTANGIBLES B LOCATION   Knoxville, TN  CONFERENCE Southeastern LAST SEASON 16-16 (.500)  CONFERENCE RECORD 7-11 (10th)  STARTERS RETURNING/LOST 4/1  NICKNAME Volunteers  COLORS Orange & White HOMECOURT Thompson-Boling Arena (21,678)  COACH Rick Barnes (Lenoir-Rhyne ’77)  RECORD AT SCHOOL First year  CAREER RECORD 604-313 (28 years)  ASSISTANTS Rob Lanier (St. Bonaventure ’90) Chris Ogden (Texas ’04) Desmond Oliver (Dominican College ’92) WINS (LAST 5 YRS.) 19-19-20-24-16 RPI (LAST 5 YRS.) 41-90-66-37-102 2014-15 FINISH Lost in SEC quarter finals. HART-ATTACK Late last March, just as Tennessee basketball fans were steeling themselves for yet another protracted search for a basketball coach, the unthinkable happened. Rick Barnes became available. What do you do if you’re Tenn...

Butler University was founded as North Western Christian by Ovid Butler in 1855 .  He choose "Christians" as the school mascot.  Sometime after the school had been rename in honor of its founder, Butler was suffering a poor football season in 1919 . As losses mounted, people grew wary of the "Christians" nickname. Before a big game against the rival Franklin "Baptists", the Butler Collegian was trying to conceive of a way to fire people up when "Shimmy", a bulldog owned by one of the fraternities, wandered into their office. Shimmy inspired cartoonist George Dickson to draw a bulldog labeled "Butler" taking a bite out of John The Baptist . Butler lost the game, but the nickname "Bulldogs" stuck.  Eventually, the bulldog was selected as the official mascot of the university. For many years, Butler had unofficial live bulldog mascots that kept by various fraternities .  In 2000, Butler Blue became the school'...