The Northwestern Wildcats are the athletic teams that represent Northwestern University, located in Evanston, Illinois. Northwestern is a founding member of the Big Ten Conference and the only private university in the conference. Northwestern is known as “Chicago’s Big Ten Team.” The Northwestern mascot is Willie the Wildcat. However, the team's first mascot was a live, caged bear cub from the Lincoln Park Zoo named Furpaw. After a losing season in 1923, the team decided that Furpaw was the harbinger of bad luck and Willie made his debut ten years later in 1933. Before 1924, they were known as "The Purple" and unofficially as "The Fighting Methodists." The name Wildcats was bestowed upon the university in 1924 by Wallace Abbey, a writer for the Chicago Daily Tribune who wrote that even in a loss to the University of Chicago, "Football players had not come down from Evanston; wildcats would be a name better suited to Coach Glenn Thistletwaite's boys."