The University of Nevada, Reno is a land grant university based in Reno, Nevada that was founded in 1874. The Wolf Pack are the sports teams that compete on behalf of the university in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I as part of the Mountain West Conference. The school's athletic teams were originally dubbed the Sagebrushers (an ode to Nevada's official state flower), but in 1921 a local Reno sports writer referred to the university's players as a "pack of wolves" and since then the athletic department has gone by the canine-charged moniker.