From our friends at Wikipedia.org:
"The
Nittany Lion is the mascot of the
Pennsylvania State University in
State College, Pennsylvania in the
United States. It refers to the
mountain lions that once roamed nearby.
The mascot was the creation of Penn State senior H. D. "Joe" Mason in
1907. While on a
1904 trip to
Princeton University, Mason had been embarrassed that Penn State did not have a mascot. Mason, of course, did not let that deter him...he fabricated the Nittany Lion on the spot and proclaimed that it would easily defeat even the Princeton Bengal tiger. Upon returning to campus, though, he set about making his invention a reality. In 1907, he wrote in the student publication
The Lemon:
"Every college the world over of any consequence has a college emblem of some kindall but The Pennsylvania State College... Why not select for ours the king of beasts--the Lion!! Dignified, courageous, magnificent, the Lion allegorically represents all that our College Spirit should be, so why not 'the Nittany Mountain Lion?' Why cannot State have a kingly, all-conquering Lion as the eternal sentinel?"
Mountain lions had roamed on nearby Mount Nittany until the
1880s, when they were eliminated. The origin of the name "Mount Nittany" is obscure, the most commonly accepted explanation being that it is derived of
Native American words (loosely pronounced as "neet-a-nee") meaning either "single mountain" or a protective barrier against the elements."