When I arrived at Marquette as a freshman from Dyersville, Iowa, in the fall of 1956 and got in some pickup basketball games on the outdoor courts, I discovered the school was having a bit of an identity crisis because of its nickname.
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In 1954, apparently hoping to feed off the hysteria generated by the Boston Braves’ move to Milwaukee two years earlier, Marquette had changed its nickname from the Hilltoppers to the Warriors.
Many of the upperclassmen I met on the outdoor courts, particularly those from Milwaukee, were very upset. They felt that the Hilltoppers’ nickname had given Marquette a distinct identity and that it was demeaning to grab onto the coattails of the Milwaukee Braves and adopt a figurative mascot, Willie Wampum, whose caricature was the spittin’ image of that of the Braves’ cartoon character.
During the course of my 4 1/2 years at Marquette, I met athletes who’d been Hilltoppers, and they were insulted when people started referring to them as former Warriors.
Now, the Braves are long gone from Milwaukee. It was a passionate love affair that ended unhappily for the city. And, in the years that followed, as the controversy over Marquette’s nickname arose and intensified and it was changed from the Warriors to the Golden Eagles to the Gold to God only knows what will be next, I’ve often thought: “Maybe they had it right way back when they called them the Marquette Hilltoppers.”