Gonzaga’s brand of winning leads university’s broader growth

In the summer of 1998, Gonzaga University was a small private college in Eastern Washington that barely made a blip on the public consciousness, even within its own region.

To shake things up, administrators decided to change the school’s visual identity. The school colors went from light blue and white to a deep navy. The odd-looking mascot — a bulldog in a sailor’s cap — needed an update, too, so it became the snarling canine with the spiked collar of today.

A new brand was born.

“We made a conscious decision to change who we were,” Gonzaga athletic director Mike Roth said. “We decided we wanted people to see us differently, too, and to do that we had to change the way things looked. We sat down that summer and decided, we need a new logo. We made it and thought, ‘That’s pretty cool.’ ”

The logo got a huge boost of popularity the next men’s basketball season, when the scrappy Bulldogs made a run to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament, becoming synonymous with success as the program continued to grow.

Under the guidance of Coach Mark Few, Gonzaga became a national powerhouse, reaching the NCAA Tournament 19 straight times with multiple trips to the Sweet 16.

That snarling bulldog is now on the sport’s biggest stage as Gonzaga gets set to play mighty North Carolina in Monday night’s national championship game.

“We don’t pretend or think we’re anywhere near the level with the tradition of Carolina or Duke or Kentucky,” Few said. “But at the same time, I think we do feel we’ve been a national entity for quite some time. The product, the brand, the players, the team that we’re putting out there on the floor we feel can compete with anybody in the country on any given night.”