Opinion

S.F. State Gator going extinct?

San Francisco State is considering changing its 80-year-old gator mascot. San Francisco State is considering changing its 80-year-old gator mascot. Photo: San Francisco State University Photo: San Francisco State University Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close S.F. State Gator going extinct? 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

San Francisco State University President Les Wong said he is "about 90 percent sure" the school is going to dump its 80-year-old mascot, the Gators.

We're about 90 percent certain that Wong's trial balloon, revealed this week in the student newspaper Golden Gate Xpress, is going to be more controversial than he imagined.

Oh, sure, the alligator is a carnivore whose diet and temperament don't quite suit the sensibilities of the city of Slow Food and the Summer of Love. But its name does not instantly offend in ways that forced Eastern Washington University (Savages to Eagles, 1973), Elon University (Fighting Christians to Phoenix, 1999) and Miami of Ohio (Redskins to RedHawks, 1997) to switch nicknames.

In pro sports, Washington's basketball team recognized the tastelessness of Bullets (changed to Wizards in 1997) while its football team remains in denial about the offensiveness of a nickname not worthy of citation in this newspaper.

Wong is hoping for a moniker and mascot more fitting and futuristic for the more sports-oriented university he envisions.

According to State's website, the alligator was chosen from a reader suggestion ("well built ... steadfast ... steadily moving toward its goal") to the student newspaper in 1931. The reader proposed Golden Gaters, with an intentional misspelling to add a link to a mile-wide strait just north of campus. But "Gators" was the name that stuck.

Wong is relatively new in town, so he can be forgiven for missing the local nexus: the 1996 sighting of an alligator in the Presidio's Mountain Lake that captivated the city and led The Chronicle to summon seasoned gator hunter Trapper Jim from Florida to join the search.

A warning to Wong: The critter remains at large and might not take too kindly to this slap at a gator's pride.