The Way Back: Pig Out
Unlocking the vault of UT history
Before Bevo, Longhorn fans were endeared to another four-legged friend. Pig Bellmont was named after Gus “Pig” Dittmar, a football player who could slip his way through opposing defenses “like a greased pig.” Sadly, the scruffy pit bull-mix didn’t have that kind of luck when it came to crossing the Drag.
Pig first set foot on the Forty Acres as a 7-week-old pup in 1914. He belonged to Theo Bellmont, UT’s first athletics director, who presumably didn’t have the heart to leave him cooped up at home. According to campus lore, he roamed campus by day, slept on the University Co-op steps by night, and attended both home and away games as varsity’s first live mascot.
Unfortunately, on New Year’s Day in 1923, he was hit by a Ford Model T at 24th and Guadalupe. Four days later and with considerable fanfare, the UT community sent him on his way to the place where all dogs go. A crowd gathered and a band played. Pallbearers carried his windowed casket through the streets of Austin. The epitaph read, “Pig’s Dead. Dog Gone.”
Photo courtesy of the Briscoe Center for American History
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