Pepperdine’s mascot Willie the Wave is the goofiest of the university’s icons. In his best iterations, he looks like an anthropomorphic squirt of toothpaste. But he’s our little dentifrice dandy, and his design is so widely celebrated that he’s featured on ESPN commercials, raising the profile of Pepperdine athletics without ever winning a game. This is the story of the rise, fall, and triumphant return of one of Pepperdine’s oldest symbols.
Roland Wave (1945-1952)
Willie had a long gestation. Pepperdine’s teams have been called the Waves from the very beginning. The name was announced in the very first issue of The Graphic, which explains, “the naming of athletic teams after animals has been overdone.”1 Selecting a force of nature rather than an animal may have been novel, but it certainly made it hard to produce an anthropomorphic mascot. That’s probably why we don’t see anything like a mascot for the first eight years of the school’s history.
But that all changed in 1945, when The Graphic introduced a cartoon of a wave with a snarling face. The drawing was the work of sophomore Glover Shipp, who called the character Roland Wave, after the cheer, “Roll on, you Waves!”2 With the problem of how to anthropomorphize a wave being solved, it was only a matter of time before someone put on a costume.
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Early Willies (1952-1987)
In fact, it only took seven years. In 1952, sophomore Teddy Bryant portrayed “Willie Wave,” wearing a papier-mâché mask that bore a striking resemblance to Roland, including his trademark grimace. Willie gamboled about at football games, mocking the opposing band and cheerleaders and earning the affection of the student body.3
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Willie was developed by the Activities Committee as a replacement for Joe the Pelican, a live pelican that had been brought to football games in 1951 but was deemed too expensive to maintain. Joe was mourned following his replacement: “All he wanted was a mackerel or two between quarters. And, he gave something distinctive to the Pepperdine side of the field. He did not wear a plaster head. He didn’t have to, the one he had was good enough.”4
Over the next decade, Willie’s costume was updated, but it kept Roland’s teardrop snarl. With time, the cartoon Roland started to be identified with the costumed Willie so that by 1962 the cartoon was called “Willy the Wave" in the student handbook.5
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Around the time of the move to Malibu, things degenerated. The historical record is sparse, but it affords us a few glimpses of the ever-evolving mascot. In 1979 Willie the Wave appears as a jug of water carried by students. And by 1981, Willie is a student wearing a cape with an image of Roland on it, a portrayal that was not well received by the student body, who threw things at him during the game.6
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Willie, redesigned (1987-1996)
By the school’s fiftieth anniversary in 1987, Pepperdine’s mascot was seriously in need of an overhaul. So a design contest was held for a new costume concept, which ended up being a furry monstrosity with an insane white pompadour. The new Willie was received with some scorn but more good-natured jokes, labeling him “a cross between Smurf and Gumby”7 and “a large blue banana with a white mohawk.”8 The costume was so absurd that it received a good deal of coverage in the local press.9
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By the early 90s, however, popular sentiment again demanded a redesign. Another contest was held, with students choosing between a chiseled Super Willie wearing sunglasses on his oversized head and a costume inspired by the sea god Neptune, complete with trident, beard, and crown. The winner was Super Willie, and the costume faithfully recreated the winning sketch, debuting in 1993 to positive reviews.10 Super Willie is probably best understood as the origin of today’s design.
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The Neptune years (1996-2003)
For all his success, Super Willie didn’t last long. Just three years after his debut, he was replaced with a new mascot, King Neptune, the result of a design process led by Jeff Bliss and the university’s Public Affairs Committee. Neptune, who featured in a new logo in addition to the new costumed mascot, was an attempt by the administration to increase merchandise sales and improve the university’s image on the national stage.11 The costume, unveiled at Midnight Madness in October 1996, ended up looking a lot like the sketch that had lost the vote in 1993.
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But Neptune’s reign wasn’t without controversy. From the start, there was tension with those who thought it wasn’t appropriate to represent a Christian school with a pagan god. The administration anticipated this objection, dismissing it when Neptune was first introduced, with a casual, “Let’s face it, he’s a cartoon character.”12 That line of argument must not have satisfied the critics because Neptune’s kingdom came to an end in 2003 when a new logo was introduced.13
Mascotless (2003-2006)
For a couple years, Pepperdine went without a mascot. The Graphic, soliciting unexplored ideas, floated student proposals as improbable as a pepper shaker and a raccoon rooting through a garbage can.14
In 2005, a committee designed a team of five new costumed mascot characters, called the Wave Men, outfitted in orange jumpsuits, sunglasses, and outrageous wigs. The idea was that everyone would feel represented by the diversity of Willie the Wave Jr., Bruce Undertow, Danni Diesel, Arty Wavespeare, and Dexter Gigabyte. The student body, however, was unimpressed. At the announcement, one member of the audience was heard to say, “You’ve got to be kidding me,”15 and another later recounted, “It was kind of like, ‘Oh.’”16 The Graphic ran harsh editorials comparing the Wave Men to the Power Rangers.17 The idea was shelved and the school endured another year with no mascot.18
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The return of Willie (2006-present)
By 2006, the time was ripe for another attempt at a mascot. The memory of the Wave Men fiasco was already fading, and students were eager to embrace a suitable offering. So when a redesigned Willie the Wave was announced as the new mascot, he was welcomed enthusiastically with a glowing editorial in The Graphic.19 The new Willie was a lighter blue than his predecessors, almost turquoise, but he had the same oversized head with a crashing wave hairdo. He wore sunglasses, flip-flops, and a Hawaiian shirt, and he traded in the old Roland grimace for a dazzling smile. The 2006 iteration was the perfect marriage of the laid-back Malibu surfer and the traditional Willie character inherited from the 50s and 60s, truly a triumph of mascot design.
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Willie has been pretty firmly entrenched since 2006, making the last eighteen years the long and stable golden age of the Pepperdine mascot. There was a slight redesign debuting in 2017, darkening Willie to a truer blue and easing up on his toothy grin. The new Willie wears a basketball jersey and sneakers more than a Hawaiian shirt and flipflops, but he’s recognizably the same character. The closest The Graphic has come to agitating for change during this period was a 2017 piece proposing Willie gain a partner named Wendy the Wave to ensure “more inclusive athletics iconography” and maybe also to inculcate ring-by-spring attitudes in fans.20
The journey to the modern Willie has been long and winding. It started with a student’s sketch in 1945, was brought to life as a costumed character by the enthusiasm of generations of students, and was eventually coopted by university officials after their top-down attempts at mascots couldn’t garner the same acceptance as the old familiar tradition. But once administrators embraced their goofy inheritance, they carried it to new heights, far beyond the amateur papier-mâché of the earliest incarnations. Long live Willie!
Unsigned, “Pepperdine Teams To Be Known As ‘Waves’,” The Graphic, 20 Oct. 1937: 7.
Unsigned, “Presenting The Most Powerful Wave East Of The Pacific -- Roland,” The Graphic, 9 Nov. 1945: 3.
Unsigned letter to the editor, The Graphic, 19 Nov. 1952: 6.
See Student Handbook 1962-63, p. 15, SCUA.
Jennifer Burry, “Willie the Wave’s new look appears ‘Smurf and Gumby’ mix,” The Graphic, 4 Dec. 1986: 1.
Ibid.
Bill Weir, “‘Mutant?’ ‘Dashboard fur?’ Weak Willie Wave wipes out,” The Graphic, 8 Oct. 1987: B3.
See a summary of the coverage in Kowanda Richardson, “Mascot Willie rides wave of local media attention,” Pepperdine Voice, Feb. 1988: 6.
Mark Hull, “‘Super Willie’ should answer Pepperdine’s cry for respectable mascot,” The Graphic 2 Sept. 1993: 2.
Sandra Tapia, “Willie ‘Waves’ in King Neptune,” The Graphic, 12 Sept. 1996: A1, A3.
Ibid.
Lindsey Besecker, “Time for a fresh new look,” The Graphic, 25 Aug. 2003: C1, C4.
Graham Shea, “Mascot Madness,” The Graphic, 18 Nov. 2004: A10.
Staff editorial, “Wave Men, plus a woman,” The Graphic, 29 Aug. 2005: A10.
Lauren Hobar, “Potential mascot revealed,” The Graphic, 29 Aug. 2005: A1.
“Wave Men, plus a woman,” supra note 15.
Austin Nelsen, “Wave Men drown,” The Graphic, 16 Feb. 2006: A5.
Unsigned editorial, “Welcome back Willie the Wave,” The Graphic, 26 Oct. 2006: A6.
Kyle Cajero, “Pepperdine Needs a Female Mascot,” The Graphic, 28 Sept. 2017.