Go Bulldogs

Blue background with a white horizontal strip in the middle with blue text

“Go Bulldogs” is a traditional cheer heard during Yale University intercollegiate athletic team games—notably the university’s football team—where the Yale mascot is “Handsome Dan,” a real and very much alive bulldog. Yale has had a long line of living bulldog mascots over the years, one of the first coming along with the class of 1889, when alumnus Andrew Graves brought the namesake “Handsome Dan” to Yale. The very first bulldog, according to Chief Research Archivist at the Yale University Library Judith Ann Schiff (1937-2022), was an earlier dog named Harper.

Yale students are affectionately nicknamed “Elis” after Elihu Yale, the university’s founder of the early 1700s. At games, one can hear students chanting one of the school’s fight songs—“Bulldog,” written by fellow alumnus Cole Porter—which goes: “Bulldog! Bulldog! Bow, wow, wow. Eli Yale! Bulldog! Bulldog! Bow, wow, wow. Our team can never fail!”