However, back in the 90's I spent some time compiling various lists of dislikes and posting them on my AIM away messages - these ranged from the worst bands of that year to the worst TV sitcoms of all time. However, since I was the creator them there were always two rules:
1) I am always right.
2) If you have any opinions/questions/disagreements/arguments/counterpoints, see Rule #1.
Soooooo (old man voice: get to the fucking point already!) I have decided that my almost narcotic-like addiction to college sports and my constant traveling of college campuses has led me to be able to write about one thing that I can truly a) fall behind with unabashed candor and knowledge and 2) allow me to constantly post every couple days. It's genius! Honestly, it's like the invention of the double-sided dildo - both parties are equally pleased.
I will spend the next period of days nay, WEEKS, counting down what I believe are the 30 Worst Mascots in all of college sports. Plenty of bloggers have attempted this already and some have had decent attempts at it. I, however, bring a level of panache and gusto to it unseen in the world of unfunny sports writers and un-sports worthy comics. I fall right in the middle. I'm a cynic and I know my ballgames. Boom goes the dynamite!
You may, in the course of this little adventure, see a school that is familiar to you OR one that you or a loved one may attend/have attended. If this is the case..SUCKS for you. Some of these schools are top-tier, mainstream institutions, prominently showcasing their mascots on "Capital One Mascot Challenges" and others are about as a cool as a fart in a spacesuit. Trust me, I spent hours doing far more research than any bloggist (or is it blogger?) has done before me. I am the Spartanburg Methodist College mascot of my genre (get it, Pioneer). And yes people, you will have to suffer through awful puns and mascot-humor, a niche solely created by me. I am also going to attempt to interview a former college mascot and get his take on what it was like to be the man inside a giant furry head.
So before I start my list of "Who should be thankful they just missed the cut," I wanted to offer some criteria on how I made up my list. Overall, I took into account a few things that worked against each of these school:
1) The overall look of the physical embodiment of the mascot. How was the character represented in real life? What is its outfit and shtick?
2) The name or nickname of the team? For example, I chose to leave UC Santa Cruz "Banana Slugs" off the list because in my opinion it is unique and kinda cool. Sure, its also weird and off-putting, but the school did well in marketing it right and creating a very likable approach to the character. However, other schools have BLOWN this area and led to their inclusion on my list.
3) The mascot logo on paper. Some schools don't have the budget to afford a costumed crusader (NOT sending my kids there) and so a 2-D fighting' representation is all we have to work with.
4) The school itself and its need for a mascot. You will see PLENTY of these.
5) The prominence and rich history of athletics at the school. HA.
This list will begin will begin with the "be thankful" souls below and count backwards from number 30 to number one. There will tears, laughs, lobotomies, appendectomies, ice cream sundays and time spent huddled around the warm glow of your computer screen with your family, slapping knees and sending genuine warm embraces for how much this blog means to the social fabric of your lives. So, without further ado I present...
Just Missed my List...
Big Red is one of the most popular mascots in the universe and has made countless appearances on ESPN commercials as well as his never-ending reign as a Capital One mascot participant. I will agree that he has sort of a fat-kid appeal, running around like a gelatinous hairy blob, bouncing and shaking all over. I also wonder if he is a natural redhead.
Overall, his popularity and sometimes silly gimmicks kept him out of the top 30. WKU is still a God-awful school, in a shitty town (Bowling Green, KY) and the Hilltopper is one of the worst nicknames in all of intercollegiate athletics. I got it: let's make our other official logo a hand waiving a red towel. A little less moonshine and a little more Northern marketing could go a looong way folks.
I've been to Syracuse a number of times and overall it is not a cool place (sorry if you read this Susan). It's constantly cold, the campus is on a huge hill and the city itself is a crack-infested wasteland of crime and despair. Also, it's full of NYC kids who can be rude and egotistical to say the least. I do, however, respect their ability to pull decent athletes and for their ability to compete in the Big East. What I don't respect is the fact that the school changed its name from the "Orangemen" to the "Orange" to appease political activists and to include women's rights. REALLY? Women were so opposed to being an Orangeman that they picketed? This isn't suffrage people, it's a school name. Either way, you got what you wished: a nickname that is a color, a fruity mascot and the same dank, desolate, isolated campus where a sharp bottle to the kidney is more likely than a sunny day.
Ahhh Stanford. Top five academic institution, the US's largest collegiate endowment ($12 billion. Suck it Harvard), a picturesque campus, a sports program that has at least one national championship each of the last 16 years (record) and a laundry list of alumni. What do you do with all that brainpower, money and clout? You commission a group of blind 6 year-old Korean children to sew a giant weed bud. Also, your school name is a color and not a bird. Only in California does this seem normal.
Naming your mascot after the name of your mascot? Genius! What's smarter than that? Putting a campus in Billings, SD and expecting kids not to drink away their boredom. If any kids with sub par SAT scores looking to develop heavy dependencies on narcotics and alcohol are looking for a place to continue down the road to a career at a drive-through window, look no further.
School: Youngstown State University
Nickname: Penguins
Mascot: Pete the Penguin and his "lady of the evening"
Nothing says pure terror like Youngstown, OH. Being that I am from NE Ohio myself, this place is legendary. The old rule of thumb for traveling through Y-Town is simply this: Don't stop at stoplights or stop signs unless you want to be robbed. Seriously.
For years, Youngstown had the highest murder rate of any US city. This place makes Detroit look like Dubai. And what should I do if I am a suburban parent looking to send my son or daughter off to get a college degree? Load them with credit cards and nice clothes and send them to their slaughter. YSU was the starting spot of Jim "The Vest" Tressel and a DII football powerhouse for years. It only naturally makes sense that they chose the Penguin, the indigenous animal of NE Ohio as their mascot. Brilliant. Clad them in vests that a Polish grandmother sewed to get her family of 15 through the tough Ohio winters 55 years ago and give one the eyebrows of Eugene Levi and you have a recipe for menace and fear. You should just give them stolen semi-automatics, a bag of non-sequential, unmarked bills, matching grape-flavored chewy blunts and airbrushed Air Force Ones. I hope that all my YSU alumni friends have kept their computer from being stolen long enough to read this.
This is taken straight from the UT at C Wikipedia entry:
"The school's athletic teams are called the Mocs. The teams were nicknamed Moccasins until 1996. (The origin of the name is uncertain; however, Moccasin Bend is a large horseshoe-shaped bend in the Tennessee River directly below Lookout Mountain.)
The mascot has taken on four distinct forms, with a water moccasin being the mascot in the 1920s, and then a moccasin shoe (known as "The Shoe") was actually used as the school's mascot at times in the 1960s and 1970s. From the 1970s until 1996, the mascot was Chief Moccanooga, an exaggerated Cherokee tribesman.
In 1996, due to concerns over ethnic sensitivity,[6] the Moccasins name and image were dropped in favor of the shortened "Mocs" and an anthropomorphized mockingbird named "Scrappy" dressed as a railroad engineer. The school's main athletic logo features Scrappy riding a train (a reference to Chattanooga's history as a major railroad hub and to the song "Chattanooga Choo Choo"). The mascot takes its name from former football coach A.C. "Scrappy" Moore."
So what you are telling me is that your team was named after a river, a shoe, a snake, an Indian Chief...and you decided that the best course of action was to name it after a giant chicken wearing a chefs hat riding a locomotive and taking blasts of coal exhaust to his face? I'll take Indian insensitivity and toughness over KFC any day.
Flagstaff, AZ is a pretty cool place. It's nestled in the mountains, provides great skiing opportunities, and is a tremendous getaway from the barren, grass less city of Phoenix. What people don't tell you is that the campus of NAU is situated directly between three sprawling cemeteries and has numerous effigies of giant, bearded shirtless men all over it. The mascot is essentially the incestuous, chromosome-deficient younger brother of the Brawney Paper Towel guy. He looks more like the fat, axe-wielding Dwarf Gimli from Lord of the Rings than he does a lumbering woodsman. Also, to make him even more intimidating, they dress him in MC Hammer pants and Ugg boots and arm him with a stuffed, cartoonish axe. This guy looks more like a truck-stop rest patron or a homeless man than some iconic figure that a school could rally behind.
Why does Ohio do this to me? Honest to God this is a REAL college mascot. I mean seriously, look at this picture. Creepy, pedophile smile? Check. Innocent, "I won't tell mommy" children to feed on? Check. Parent who apparently lets her kids stay at Neverland as well? Check. What this picture doesn't include is the mascot's tear away, easy access pants, stash of "pills for fun, well-behaved boys" and key to his Econolodge room full of Transformer toys and ether. This, people, is why I am a conflicted Catholic.
Located in Terre Haute, IN (widely known as one of the top meth-producing cities in America) this "party school" (joke) is widely considered one of the top engineering schools in the US (serious). What kind of student goes here? Guys that cut their underpants in high school to avoid epic wedgies and girls who have a lifetime subscription to ProActiv and Haagen-Dazs. They should just call this place "E-Harmonyland." Nothing says "be scared of us" than a tuxedo-shoe wearing, disproportionate elephant mascot with a club hand that is the iconic symbol of "the Fighting Engineers." Hopefully these nerds don't rise up and stab me to death with their protractors for writing this.
Nothing says quality education like a school located in the LBC (sing it Nate Dogg). While the schools official nickname is the 49'ers (named for the gold teeth and chains you will find there) the unofficial mascot is...the Dirtbag? Seems fitting. In order to capture that glory, the apparently commissioned a drunk, 1940's cartoonist to pen this depiction of a stubbly-armed, checker-clothed wearing, neckerchief sporting Bear. Notice the salmon pink shirt and douchey gold belt buckle with the letter "C" on it. What does that stand for? Chotch?
As the caption reads, "schedule your campus visit today!" Come to a school that took 10 years to decide on what to call their school, where our students are all athletes who weren't smart enough to play in DI and where our mascot carries a pix axe, shovel and...slide rule! Wahhh, wahhh wahahahahhhh. Note: a sliderule is used primarily for division and multiplication, BUT can also be used for roots, logarithms and trigonometry! Yeeehaw! Let's use it to multiply how many athletes have come out of the school (x) the number of awesome things that have come out of this school (x) the media attention this school gets (x) if anyone knows where this is and...who cares.
Ahh, Zorro's grandfather. Glad to see Zorro's grand-mama let you out of tending to your tomato plants and community shuffleboard league long enough to emblazon your likeness on a University that allows Eddie Sutton to stumble pathetically drunk on the sidelines. If this logo was Antonio Bandares awesome then it wouldn't even crack this list. However, your butterknife sword and "I'm about to do something so bad it ends up on the news" face really put you over the edge. I think you would have been better going with this Don, this one, or this one.
As you can see, these were "worthy" contenders. However, if this list enthralled you then stay tuned as I continue ranting about the 30 Worst Collegiate Mascots in the world! Comment/share/rant back and enjoy!
Until next time...Seeyah!
What I am laughing at right now: The top 60 Ghetto names. Great stuff!
