The University of San Francisco is retiring the masked, mustachioed Don who has fronted its athletics program for more than 90 years, swapping him out for a wolf while keeping the Dons nickname intact. The university announced the change following years of student criticism that the mascot's Spanish-colonial imagery glorified the conquest of California's Indigenous people.
USF president Salvador Aceves said the timing was right to revitalize the school's image, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, which first reported the announcement. Aceves, who was named president by the USF Board of Trustees in March 2026, said the school will remain the University of San Francisco Dons even as the visual mascot changes. The wolf is intended to symbolize the university's Jesuit background rather than the conquistador-style figure it replaces.
A Mascot Born in 1932, Now Facing Retirement
USF teams have carried the Dons name since January 1932, when a committee of undergraduates, alumni and administrators selected it to replace the school's previous moniker, the Grey Fog, which had been used until November 1931, according to the university's own account at usfca.edu. For decades, the Don was depicted as a masked man with a pencil mustache, a flat, Spanish-style green hat, green gloves and a flowing cape — an image the Chronicle's earlier reporting traced directly to that colonial aesthetic. The longtime mascot was said to celebrate Don Francisco de Haro, the first mayor of Yerba Buena, the settlement that would later become San Francisco.
USF has said the word Don actually derives from De Origen Noble, meaning of noble origin, according to student newspaper the San Francisco Foghorn. But that etymology did little to quiet objections once students began organizing against the mascot in earnest.
Years of Student Pressure Preceded the Change
USF's student government passed a resolution in 2022 calling on the university to abandon the Don image, declaring that the figure represented the Spanish colonization of California's Indigenous people. A petition backing that resolution gathered more than 400 signatures by August 2023, per the Chronicle's earlier coverage, and demanded a task force of students, staff and administrators implement a new mascot by the start of the 2024-25 academic year. Ariana Anayat, who spearheaded the push while serving as student government vice president in 2022 and graduated from USF in December 2023, said years of engagement by students, professors and administrators made the eventual change possible, per the Foghorn's reporting.
USF created a task force in August 2023 to study the logistics and implications of a switch, the student paper reported. That working group included four students, six alumni, one trustee, and six faculty and staff members, but it did not have the authority to approve any particular mascot or name — leaving the final call to university leadership. The group planned listening sessions and open forums, though not every corner of campus was on board: some student athletes told the Foghorn, “We don't want a mascot change, we are proud of being the Dons,” and officials acknowledged a change would incur significant expenditures still under study at the time.
Why a Wolf, and Why Now
The wolf choice draws on imagery already present on campus. Large bronze statues of Los Lobos de Loyola — wolves tied to the 15th-century coat of arms of St. Ignatius of Loyola, who founded the Jesuits — stand in front of Gleeson Library at USF. Ignatius was a Spanish nobleman before turning to religious life, and his family is said to have provided food for others and for wild wolves in their Spanish territory, a detail the university is leaning on to connect the new mascot to its Jesuit identity.
Kevin Burke, USF's vice president of mission and Ignatian imagination, is overseeing the mascot transition and said the wolf imagery maintains a connection to the Dons nickname even as the human Don character disappears. The university says the new mascot is meant to honor the school's history and Jesuit background, and that it plans to engage the campus community in deciding the wolf costume's final appearance, which remains in development. USF also says it will phase out references to Don Francisco and language personifying the Don character across university communications, materials and campus spaces.
Brent Blaylock, who joined USF as athletic director in June 2026, arrives at the school as the transition moves forward. Not everyone has welcomed the news: some USF affiliates criticized the announcement on social media as overly politically correct. USF's move echoes a broader pattern at American universities confronting mascots tied to colonial figures — George Washington University, for instance, announced it would rename its teams the Revolutionaries after years of student pressure over the previous Colonials moniker, according to The New York Times.
