About Stanford Cardinal basketball
Stanford Cardinal is the nickname of the athletic teams at Stanford University. Following its win over Cal in the first-ever Big Game in 1892, the color cardinal was picked as the primary color of Stanford's athletic teams. White was adopted as a secondary color in the 1940s. In 1930, the athletic department adopted the mascot "Indian." The Indian symbol and name were later dropped by President Richard Lyman in 1972, after objections from Native American students and a vote by the student senate.
From 1972 to 1981, the official nickname was the Cardinals. Despite the plural form of the name, the name was intended to refer to the color, not the bird. During the 1970s, a number of suggestions were put forth as possible nicknames: Robber Barons (a sly reference to Leland Stanford's history), Sequoias, Trees, Railroaders, Spikes, Huns, and Griffins. The last suggestion gained enough momentum to prompt the university to move two griffin statues to be near the athletic facilities.
On November 17, 1981, school President Donald Kennedy declared that the athletic teams be represented by the color Cardinal in its singular form.
Stanford has no official mascot, but the Stanford Tree, a member of the Stanford Band wearing a self-designed tree costume, appears at major Stanford sports events. The Tree is based upon El Palo Alto, a redwood tree in neighboring Palo Alto that appears in the Stanford seal and athletics logo.
Through the spring 2009 sports season, Stanford has won 111 national championships. Of these, 97 are NCAA team championships, second most among all universities (UCLA ranks first). Of the 97 championships, 59 are in men's sports (third behind UCLA and USC) and 38 are in women's sports, the most of any university. Stanford also holds the most NCAA individual sport titles at 421 championships, followed by USC at 358, and Texas at 303.
Stanford has won the NACDA Director's Cup for Division I, awarded annually to the college or university with the most success in collegiate athletics, for 15 consecutive years (1994-95 to 2008-09).