Page "Oregon Ducks" Paragraph 1

Oregon teams were originally known as Webfoots, possibly as early as the 1890s.

The Webfoots name originally applied to a group of fishermen from the coast of Massachusetts who had been heroes during the American Revolutionary War ; their descendants had settled in Oregon's Willamette Valley in the 19th century and the name stayed with them.

A naming contest in 1926 won by Oregonian sports editor L. H. Gregory made the Webfoots name official, and a subsequent student vote in 1932 affirmed the nickname, chosen over other suggested nicknames such as Pioneers, Trappers, Lumberjacks, Wolves, and Yellow Jackets.