Introducing the Big West teams: Cal Poly Mustangs

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to introduce the current members of the Big West conference.  This introduction will focus on the school, the fans, the athletics and other random trivial facts.  Hopefully, this will be an educational and fun introduction.  Of course, if you the alumni/fan of that team would like to correct me, feel free to do so in the comment section below or shoot me an email.

With that, allow me to introduce (in alphabetical order) the first member of the current Big West Conference: Cal Poly Mustangs.


Cal Poly (California Poly-technical Institute - San Luis Obispo)
Location: San Luis Obispo, California
Established: 1901
Students: 18,762
Colors: Green and Gold
Mascot: Musty the Mustang
Famous Alumni (my choice): Weird Al Yankovic

Cal Poly sits close to the Central California coast nearly halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

As a school it's known for fantastic engineering programs, ranking nationally for Electrical, Computer, Mechanical, Industrial, Aerospace and Civil engineering.  While it has many architecturally unique buildings, easily the most distinguishable landmark on the campus (or off rather) is the "P" on the hill next to campus, built in 1919.  A 15-minute hike up, the P is lit the night before and of a football game to remind the residents of SLO (as San Luis Obispo).

The Mustangs are known for their football team (currently in the Big Sky Conference), women's volleyball and men's soccer.  Their main rivals are UC Davis Aggies (because of the Agricultural connection of both teams) and the football team plays for The Golden Horseshoe.  A secondary rival has developed with the UCSB Gauchos for the planets sustainability, called the Blue-Green rivalry.  This rivalry entails all sports, scoring one point for each team win, except for baseball and softball which gain 2 points.

Here's some more fun facts about Cal Poly:

• Weird Al earned his degree in architecture at Cal Poly right around the time he made it big with My Bologna (his first "hit").
•  The numbers on Cal Poly's seal spells out "1901" in binary
• John Madden played football for Poly in the late 1950's
• Cal Poly has a sister polytechnic school: Cal Poly Pomona

And now you know a little about the Mustangs!

Next week: Cal State Fullerton