Idaho, like many teams of its day, found their nickname when a journalist wrote about the school’s athletic prowess. Idaho’s teams, according to the press, “vandalized” their opponents; once Argonaut writer Jazz McCarty called the basketball team a “gang of ‘Vandals,’” in praise of their tenacity, the nickname was off and running. Since then, the Vandal has been modeled as a caricature of the ancient European warriors of the same name.