Is the Bull City hand gesture being rebranded for Duke Athletics? Should it be?

The billboard, on Interstate 85 near the exit for Duke University, shows the Duke Blue Devil raising its hands, knuckles together and thumbs out.

It’s an iconic gesture in the university’s hometown. But the devil mascot, in a “Bull City” headband, looks out at passing cars and offers a new take on Durham’s favorite hand gesture.

“Put up your Dukes,” the billboard instructs, the last word rendered in the school’s trademark Gothic font.

Duke fans and athletes love throwing up the horns, and the gesture has the potential to become as familiar as the wolf hand signal at N.C. State games, the gator chomp in Florida, or Hook ‘Em Horns in Texas.

To many in Durham, though, that’s a difficult rebrand to swallow.

Where did Bull City hand gesture come from?

Throwing up the Bull, as it’s sometimes called outside Duke’s stone walls, has somewhat murky origins.

Durham residents interviewed by The News & Observer couldn’t pinpoint the first time they’d seen it. Most believe it caught on sometime in the early 2000s, more popular among Millennials than their parents.

“I think my earliest memory is probably high school,” said Jeskell McCreecy, who graduated from Southern High School in 2007. “And when I went to college, everybody knew it meant that we were from Durham.”

“I can’t imagine it was much older than that, right?” mused Justin Laidlaw, a 2008 Riverside High School grad.

The first time it arrived on merchandise may have been in 2010, when Jacob Streilein and his buddy Chris Alton began printing it on T-shirts for the Riverside prom. It was so popular that afterward, they replaced “Prom 2010” on the screen-printed tees with the words “Bull City” and sold thousands.

“It was a classic pose that people would use in their Facebook posts,” Streilein said, though he couldn’t remember actually learning it.

In the ensuing decade, the gesture was occasionally incorporated into designs at Runaway, a Durham-centric clothing brand Laidlaw operated in the 2010s. (Disclaimer: Laidlaw is this reporter’s close friend.)

“It was kind of all part of the larger Durham is cool, Durham has pride [narrative],” Laidlaw said. “Like, these other cities don’t rep their city like we do — Raleigh doesn’t have a hand sign. Chapel Hill doesn’t have a hand sign.”

It was also, Duke Athletics marketing director Chris Alston said, catching on at Duke sporting events.

“It just organically started growing, where now … our students and our fans just naturally, that’s what they do when they’re in front of the camera,” Alston said.

“I think that’s probably about when it started to kind of click that a lot of sports programs and universities across the country have a hand signal, right?” Alston continued.

Now, Alston said, freshman learn the gesture when they arrive on campus.

“It’s amazing to see, because I think all it does is highlight our relationship with the city, and how proud we are to be part of that,” he said.

Streilein said it strikes him as a natural usage of the symbol, which he’s always associated with sporting events.

“Duke is part of Durham. When I think of Durham, I think of Duke. When I think of Duke, I kind of picture Durham imagery,” he said.

Laidlaw, a Duke fan, said he was excited the first time he saw a Duke soccer player throwing up the hand sign after scoring a goal.

But the new logo, he said, feels a bit misguided.

“I can imagine being at a Duke football game or Duke basketball game, and the PA announcer being like, ‘Everybody, put up your Dukes!’, and they do the Bull City hand sign. And it’s like, wait a second. That’s … that’s not what this is,” he said.

“Now you’re not paying homage to a Durham saying,” he continued. “You’re just straight up stealing a Durham thing and putting your branding on it.”

McCreecy said at the very least, the word Durham should be included in the design.

She said when she was younger, Duke students associated the hand gesture with “throwing up gang signs,” a memory that remains present for the couple of hundred people who signed onto her petition to modify the billboards.

“It has nothing to do with any type of sports rivalry. It goes deeper than all of that,” she said. “I care about the city, love the city, and just don’t want another thing taken away.

Durham night celebrates ‘amazing things behind the scenes’

Duke’s embrace of the Bull City hand gesture goes beyond billboards and banners.

It’s been introduced as a secondary logo ahead of football season and, athletics department spokesman Art Chase said, been well received.

“I’ve not heard anything negative about the logo,” he said. “Seems kind of odd, just to me.”