Our running horse logo?

[couch 'em]

I had no exposure to SMU prior to applying to admission, and do not have an affluent background. I feel like I SHOULD have thought poorly of the logo, but I never did. And with the unrelenting insults and humiliation I take at the office as a known mustang who attends football games, never has anyone mentioned the logo. For some reason it just isn't am issue.

[smusportspage]

I know that this logo deal has bean discussed in detail in a prior post somewhere on Ponyfans. I seem to recall that in fact it was Ford that "borrowed" the running mustang from SMU. There is some story behind that someone posted.

[White Helmet]

I had no exposure to SMU prior to applying to admission, and do not have an affluent background. I feel like I SHOULD have thought poorly of the logo, but I never did. And with the unrelenting insults and humiliation I take at the office as a known mustang who attends football games, never has anyone mentioned the logo. For some reason it just isn't am issue.

But your alma mater is just a small part of the list of humiliating things about you

[couch 'em]

A good chunk of that list is my roster of former roommates.

At least that list no longer includes SMU basketball.

[gostangs]

I put this at the very top of the list of things that are not an issue. Everyone loves our logo, even non preppy folks, whatever that has to do with anything.

It's those busy helmets like ECU that look like high school. Ours is simple, cool understated and iconic. Have never once heard anything but positives about it in 30 years of mustang fandom.

[EastStang]

In the mid sixties lore has it that SMU played Michigan and while they lost, they showed a lot of speed on offense and Lee Iacocca came into the locker room after the game and said, I know what I'm going to name Ford's new sports car, the Mustang. After that the logo became a cross marketing opportunity.

[masterbeater]

Ford gave Hayden Fry a red and blue Mustang to drive when the car came on the market.

[Mustangs_Maroons]

sounds like there are different possible explanations but the one that seems most credible is the one where Ford actually named the car the Mustang after Iacocca watched the SMU/Michigan game in 1963. The original ford mustang didn't debut until 1965. Interesting read and I'd like to believe that's the way it happened.

http://www.autonews.com/article/2013102 ... gs-history?

Did inspiration strike Lee Iacocca during a football game at the University of Michigan 50 years ago?

At the time, Iacocca was a vice president with Ford Motor Co., which was preparing to roll out a new sports car the following spring. On Sept. 28, 1963, after Michigan defeated Southern Methodist University, 27-16, SMU says Iacocca entered the visitor's locker room to address the dejected team.

"Today," Iacocca said, according to an SMU press release this week, "after watching the SMU Mustangs play with such flair, we reached a decision. We will call our new car the Mustang. Because it will be light, like your team. It will be quick, like your team. And it will be sporty, like your team."

Just think: If then-Michigan Athletic Director Fritz Crisler had instead scheduled that day's game against a different Dallas-area college, Texas Christian, Ford could be celebrating a half century of its venerable Horned Frog.

On the other hand, what if SMU, whose logo is a near-exact mirror image of the Ford Mustang's galloping-horse emblem, made up the whole story?

I asked Iacocca's assistant whether the story is true. She provided this response from him:

"We had a fellow at J. Walter Thompson Advertising suggest a list of names. Cars were being named with animal names, which seemed to be popular at the time. Our list had animal names, one of which was Mustang. Gene Bourdinat, VP of Styling and I sat down and chose the name Mustang from the list, because the running horse connotation suggested 'moving fast through the countryside.' Our team heard GM was considering using the name Mustang, but we registered it first."

So did Iacocca go into SMU's locker room or even attend the game at all? "I have read what you sent before and Mr. Iacocca doesn't affirm or deny when asked," she e-mailed back. "I think perhaps he gets pleasure from the various accounts on how Mustang was named."

A Mustang historian, John Clor, wrote in a June column for Ford Racing that the origin of the car's name is often debated, with no definitive answer. He brought up the SMU story but said that explanation is "widely disputed and lacks eyewitnesses other than Iacocca, who has never commented on the matter."

Clor, author of The Mustang Dynasty, said a more popular myth is that John Najjar, a Ford executive stylist, named the car for a World War II fighter plane, the P-51 Mustang.

"Although Najjar had always said the name originally had been inspired by the fighter plane and Ford press releases since have repeated that assertion, neither I nor any other Mustang historian I know over the years have seen any internal evidence to back that up," Clor wrote. "In fact, no one can really question that the car's single association with Mustang name refers only to the hardy, wild horses of the American Plains."

Ford dug up three photos of a Mustang prototype for me. They're dated Sept. 27, 1963 -- the day before Michigan played SMU. The car pictured has the word "Mustang" on the back and the horse logo on the grille, indicating that the name was chosen before the Mustangs arrived in Ann Arbor.

Regardless, SMU's head coach in 1963, Hayden Fry, insists Iacocca really did barge into the locker room, climb onto a training table and tell the Mustangs that he and his engineers had "made a big decision in the stands today." Fry, who later coached at Iowa for 20 seasons, told the Iowa City Press Citizen newspaper in February that Iacocca even sold him the first Ford Mustang -- painted in SMU's colors, red and blue -- for just $1.

"Here I lost the ballgame and [Michigan coach] Bump Elliott won it," Fry, now 84, told the paper, "and he didn't get anything and I got the first Mustang."

[Mustangs_Maroons]

Separately, not many people know this but the Chicago Bears copied the UChicago logo from its football team (this logo was redesigned in 1898 - http://athletics.uchicago.edu/about/history/c_logo), as well getting the nickname"Monsters of the Midway" from the University of Chicago football teams which at the time played in and was one of the original founding member institutions in the Big 10. Not many people seem to care either, nor to the Bears or the Cincinnati Reds feel bad about it (I don't think since I doubt they paid any royalties).

The nickname Monsters of the Midway was originally applied to the University of Chicago "Maroons", a college football team under the leadership of Amos Alonzo Stagg. "Midway" is a reference to the Midway Plaisance, a long, green swath of boulevard space bordering the southern end of the campus between 59th and 60th Streets and running from Washington Park to Jackson Park on Chicago's South Side. The U of C ended its football program in 1939, around a time of several Bears NFL Championships. During this time, their home field was Wrigley Field on the North Side of the city, roughly 12 miles (20 km) from the Midway. The "C" symbol on their helmets is borrowed from the U of C Maroons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsters_of_the_Midway

[mrydel]

I really do not care where it came from. We have one of the most recognizable logos in the country so why would we want to change it? I have never heard someone remark after seeing an SMU helmet, "That must be Ford University."

Although now that I think about it a lot of people do say FU when they see me.

[TidePony]

^^^^
Awesome!

[couch 'em]

Of course a lot of people think Ford stadium is named after automaker with the Mustang connection in mind. I see no problem with this.

[mrydel]

And several think it is named for the former President Gerald Ford.

[EastStang]

And President Ford played football at what school? You guessed it Michigan. Karma.

[SMU1523]

This type of logic leads to iconic logos and classic looks becoming extinct. I imagine this is the type of thinking that lead us to having those terrible navy blue helmets or TCU having new hideous uniforms every season. There is something to say about sticking with a classic look. I honestly think SMU should never change the Peruna logo, in fact I was upset that it has been slightly altered in the past two years. I posted a thread last season about it. Also, if you think about who is the highest caliber program or professional sports team in the country that is named the Mustangs? It is SMU. There are a lot of high caliber programs that can't say that, like Ok St. or even Mississippi St. even in their own conference. The Peruna logo is a staple of SMU and changing it will only damage the brand.