BYU Cougars
intercollegiate sports teams of Brigham Young University
The BYU Cougars are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent Brigham Young University (BYU), located in Provo, Utah. BYU fields 21 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) varsity athletic teams. They are a member of the Big 12 Conference for all sports except men's volleyball which is a member of the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation.
History
All teams are named the "Cougars"; the name was first introduced by Eugene L. Roberts in the 1920s, and initially only applied to the football team. In 1924, live cougar kittens named Cleo and Tarbo were brought to BYU and used as its mascots. In 1930, Tarbo died and Cleo was sent to the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City. By the 1950s all sports teams were known as the Cougars and it was decided that having a person in a costume was a better mascot form than live animals. The athletics mascot, Cosmo the Cougar, was created by Dwayne Stevenson, and made his first appearance before BYU fans on October 15, 1953. The school's fight song is the "Cougar Fight Song".
BYU is owned and operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the overwhelming majority of its students are members of that church.
The public source identifies “BYU Cougars” as intercollegiate sports teams of Brigham Young University. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Cougars, intercollegiate and sports.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1416599. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1924, 1930 and 1953.
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This entry incorporates text from “BYU Cougars” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.