And let us not forget that his name is the result of a bunch of Aggies branding him with the score of a game that they won against the 'Horns.
from
www.wikipedia.com:
Origin of Name
"Bo" made his first public appearance at the halftime of the 1916 Thanksgiving Day football game between Texas and archrival the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (later Texas A&M University), a game in which Texas defeated the Aggies 22 - 7. Following the game, Ben Dyer, editor of the UT campus magazine The Alcalde, referred to the mascot as BEVO. It is not known why he chose this name, though various theories have been put forth.
The best-known tale most likely did not actually occur as it is told. It is true that in 1917, four A&M students kidnapped the longhorn and branded him with "13 - 0", the score of A&M's 1915 win over Texas. However, Texas students did not, as is rumored, retaliate by changing the steer's brand to Bevo as is sometimes claimed. Instead they fattened him up and served him at a football banquet in 1920. The Aggies were fed the side they had branded and presented with the hide, which still reads 13–0.[1] Also, as mentioned above Ben Dyer had used the term one year previously, so it is not conceivable that the A&M prank led to the name.
Another story states that it is possible the editor had "Bevo" in mind, which was a near beer. However, the beverage did not become popular on campus until a later time, so this does not explain why Dyer would make such a reference.
Perhaps the most plausible story was the one reported in The Daily Texan, the student newspaper of UT: "Through the 1900s and 1910s, newspapers ran a series of comic strips drawn by Gus Mager. The strips usually featured monkeys as the main characters, all named for their personality traits. Braggo the Monk constantly made empty boasts, Sherlocko the Monk was a bumbling detective, and so on. The comic strips were popular enough to create a nationwide fad for persons to nickname their friends the same way, with an "o" added to the end. The Marx Brothers were so named by their colleagues in Vaudeville: Groucho was moody, Harpo played the harp, and Chico chased girls ("chicks"). Mager's strips ran every Sunday in newspapers throughout Texas, including Austin."
Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 3:36 pm
