:: History Site Index
:: Historical Overview
:: Timeline of Events
:: Hall of Presidents

:: USF Site & Name
:: John Allen Legacy
:: 40 Years of Memories
:: Named Buildings & Sites
:: Medical School History
:: Medicine's 1st 25 years
:: Marshall Center History
:: Early Women's Athletics
:: Student Trends
:: Snow at USF!

:: 1st Student
:: 1st Professor
:: 1st Basketball Team
:: 1st Football Team
:: 1st Marching Band
:: 1st Years of The Oracle
:: 1st Trustees

:: USF Sarasota/Manatee
:: USF St Petersburg
:: USF Lakeland

:: Traditions Overview
:: Alma Mater
:: Academic Mace
:: USF Seal & Symbols

:: Rocky the Bull
:: Herd of Thunder

:: Homecoming
:: Student Gov. Ceremony
:: Bull Market
:: Movies On The Lawn
:: "Go Bulls" Hand Symbol
:: Retired Athletic Jerseys

Raging bull - 40 Years of Memories

Just ask Ray Cooper '66. He'll tell you everything you ever wanted to know about Rocky. "I'm the first person I know that was involved with the Bull," says Cooper, head of USF's Graphics department. "Back when I was going to school here in '64, '65 and '66, I worked as a student assistant in the Graphics department. Ken Stanton was the head of the department back then. The upshot was someone in the bookstore called and asked for sketches of a Brahman bull to make into a plush toy. A stuffed teddy bull. I did some sketches. I really didn't know what to do with the eyes. So I copped a plea by sketching sunglasses on him."

These were the first of many sketches that defined USF's popular mascot. Artists Joe Busciglio and Vic Cuyar made major contributions. Cooper credits Busciglio with the final version.

Cooper was also a key player in Rocky's television debut. In the early 1970s Cooper and a small film crew trekked to a Brahman bull ranch north of USF. The owner had given permission to 'shoot' his animals.

"He was kind enough and woefully ignorant to allow three idiots out to his field and generally raise hell and film a stampede. The trouble was, Brahman bulls are gentle. No 'el toro, toro, toro.' Getting them to move required throwing rocks at their rears. We had a 16-millimeter camera. Bill Buxton (general manager of WUSF-TV) was behind the camera, mounted on tennis shoes." The resulting footage became the opening coverage of Channel 16's basketball season.

Cooper remembers, too, the "lifesize, anatomically correct, gold-painted, fiberglass Brahman bull presented to the Athletic Association in the early '70s by a Florida cattleman's association. "On a hot summer day, I was out airbrushing the bull. I made all of the parts stand out. Even some of the parts folks would have preferred not to." Cooper has worked at USF since 1968. After graduation, he spent two years serving in Vietnam, before returning to the university. Over the years, he has watched Rocky evolve through its humble beginnings to its latest, streamlined rendition. Each year, Cooper still designs a flashy, new Rocky, sporting sunglasses to serve as the logo for USF's annual homecoming.

As to what became of the original plush toy and the life-size golden bull? Says Cooper with a shrug, "Who knows?"

(1996)

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