Because it’s still 106 degrees in Austin during the month of September, the only way I can tell that it’s fall is when people start talking about their favorite college football teams. Or at least that’s who I assume they’re talking about when they put things on Facebook like, “Go Hokies!” or “Love my Razorbacks!” Maybe they actually have kids named “Hokies” and “Razorbacks.” I don’t know, I have some strange friends on Facebook. Plus hillbillies are totally popular these days.
But before social media, most people only knew the names of team mascots in their city or state. Along with those of the big schools, of course. Now it’s impossible to turn on your computer during football season and not see running commentary about some random team you’ve never heard of before. “The Bearkats had a great game last night,” I’ll say to my husband after looking at my Twitter feed.
“The who?” he’ll wonder.
“You know, the Sam Houston State Bearkats. They totally smashed the Chattanooga Mocs.”
“The what?”
Honestly, I don’t know how the man can expect to have any friends at all if he doesn’t know what’s going on in NCAA Division I Southern Conference football. It’s stunning, really.
Over my high school career I had two mascots. First, the Blue Jays in Jamestown, North Dakota, then the Carson High Senators in Nevada. I liked the Blue Jays a lot better than the Senators because a blue bird is way cuter than a big, fat man wearing a zoot suit and holding a cigar. Also, “blue jay” rhymes with “hey hey” and guess what rhymes with “senator”? Nothing. Nothing rhymes with “senator.” Well, maybe “matador” does, but that’s a pretty sucky cheer for a high school basketball game unless it’s being played in Madrid and who wants to get a passport for that shit?
Luckily things got better for me in college when my team mascot was the Oregon Duck. Lots of words rhyme with “duck.” In fact, just ask any drunk fans of the team that’s currently playing the Ducks and they’ll be happy to shout those rhyming words at you while also making some lovely finger gestures to illustrate their rhyming point. It’s ducking awesome.
In case you’ve never seen him, the Oregon Duck is basically Donald Duck in a green and yellow shirt. No pants. Ducks don’t wear pants. Nobody knows why that is and nobody wants to know why that is. But I guess not a lot of college students wear pants, either, so it kind of works. Besides, if you did put pants on a duck, it’d be hard to figure out what style would look best on him. Pleated? Corduroy? Hipster skinny jeans tight enough to destroy his little duck sperm count? Nobody knows the answer to that question, either. Ducks: The Fashion Enigma.
I like having a duck as the Oregon mascot because it makes sense. There are actually ducks in Oregon. Just like there are actually Longhorns in Texas and Bison in North Dakota. But sometimes the mascot is just something weird the school administration picked out, like they did in Hutto, Texas. Hutto is a small, dusty town outside of Austin and their high school mascot is the Hippos. I’m pretty sure there aren’t any hippos native to Hutto, TX unless they were born and raised in an above-ground pool bought down at the Wal-Mart, so that mascot is completely ridiculous. Not to mention that putting the word “Hippos” on a cheerleader outfit is downright mean.
Hutto should have consulted me on this matter because figuring out good mascot names is actually a skill of mine. One I developed during our family road trips when we’d pass random towns, like Lawn, TX. “Their school mascot should be the Mowers,” I told the kids. “Or the Ornaments.” Mesquite, Nevada? The “O’s.” Campo, Texas? The “Pheniques.” (Note: Only funny if you’ve had a canker sore.) And Sealy, Texas? Obviously the “Posturepedics.”
But my favorite team name idea came when we were passing through Tempe, Arizona. “I know!” I yelled happily, “They should name their team the Tantrums! Get it? The Tempe Tantrums? Brilliant!” Nobody in the car actually did get it and I think someone threw an empty Pringles can at my head a few minutes later, but that didn’t matter because I knew how good it was.
Even if nothing rhymes with “Tantrums.” Go Ducks!
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Too funny.
Mascot names have always cracked me up. The worst I have seen is the Columbia, Missouri Hickman High School – fighting Kewpies. Yep, Fighting Kewpies. Seriously, what the eff?!
I have also struggled with the Stanford Cardinals. The mascot is a freaking tree. I don’t get it. But then again, I wasn’t smart enough to get into Stanford so I am probably too dim to understand the Cardinal/Tree connection.
I’ve said to much.
Take care.
(A) you are hilarious. (B) it’s probably because you’re from NORTH DAKOTA!!! Yay, ND for LIFE!! (I don’t live there anymore, but grew up there).
High school: The Barons. College: The Quakers. Grad school: no teams, which was actually an improvement.
Since my husband’s party trick is to know every mascot of every college in the U.S., I think you guys should take your act on the road together.
Duh, they don’t wear pants because they’d have no place to put their tails. Sheesh. What do they teach in Oregon colleges, anyway?
My school’s mascot was a python. We weren’t very fast, but we could squeeze our opponents to death.
And don’t forget Austin High’s lovely Maroon. It’s a blob with feet.
My high school team was the Buffalo Seminary Sirens. You know, the mythical women who lured sailors to a horrible death of sailing into rocks and drowning. Yeah, that was us. To make things even better, our school colors were red and white. I was on the crew team, so we were often seen in red sweatpants with a great big old BS in white across the butt. Looked awesome as we bent over to climb into our boat. As if the mascot, the colors, the initials, and the placement thereof weren’t bad enough, my dear old Alma Mater has a longer name than most of the crew boat registration forms. Due to space restrictions, we were often announced as the Buffalo Semin crew. As in, “The ladies from Buffalo Semin are coming hard down the course. It looks like their cox is really making them give it to her. Another hard drive from Buffalo Semin and they’ll take this. Those ladies really know how to finish strong.”
Freshman year was the Rattlers. Sophomore and junior year I didn’t have one because I got into FAR too much trouble as a Rattler. Off to boarding school I went. Then it was the Bears, another boarding school but they actually played other teams but they sucked. Bad. College was the Bobcats until I had to leave because who knew taking a full course load and working full time would make my migraines explode. I went back but I St. Edward’s doesn’t have a football team. I was considered an “adult learner” in their new college program. Pfft. Little did they know what they were getting themselves into when they let me in. Maybe I could write a guest column on how many schools can you attend in order to graduate high school and college.
So, I went from having “Mr. Maroo” as my high school mascot (basically, a maroon Koosh ball…since that was the 90s, ya know), to having “The Tribe” in college (which has subsequently been decided to be politically correct…which is now the Griffin).
So, yeah, basically your Duck would have totally mutilated my mascots 🙂
Whitman College….”The Missionaries”
Nothing like too much beer and screaming:
“Missionaries, Missionaries, we’re on top!!!”
Waiting for the inevitable looks as it slowly sank in with the local crowd.
See this is way I don’t like – European – soccer: no mascots.
I was a high school cheerleader, and some of my favorite times were when an opposing team had a WTF? mascot. Mind you, ours was about as random as the Hippo, but I wasn’t about to split hairs over the opportunity to tell The Trojans to roll on down fast because it’ll be over before we blink a lash. GO TEAM!
Tempe Tantrums. Brilliant. Can’t beat it!
During the summer, a Tempe Tantrum is pretty common. Except it’s too hot to make it a big tantrum. It might be more of a slow burn.
I live in a city called Hillsboro and they have a new baseball team named the Hillsboro Hops. We do love our beer in Oregon so I think celebrating it with the team name is a pretty good plan.
The mascot looks kind of like an angry pineapple.
Worst ever: Scrotie, from the Rhode Island School of Design. Team names include Nads and Balls. It sounds made up. Sadly, it’s all too true.
Wendi, I live in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Yesterday, I spent the afternoon with Tom Knapp, who designed the Oregon Duck mascot [and the Purdue Boilermaker mascot]. I’ll ask him the pants question, but I think you’re on to it. Entertaining post.
What rhymes with ‘hug me’? What rhymes with ‘Senators’? OMG summer–stop taxing my brain so.
Well done again, Wendi!
–>Guilty. I’m the one saying Go Hokies on Facebook.
(Virginia Tech was known as the home of the gobblers and in 1903 some guy made up the school song and included the word Hoki and somehow it merged with a turkey and Boom – – Hokie Bird. It’s sort of the birds and bees.)
deb
My high school’s team name was The Trojans. So so wrong.
My mom’s HS was the Pretzels. They got super famous when the former Prez. almost died after choking on one. On the Today Show and everything.
My mom’s HS was the Pretzels. They got super famous when the former Prez. almost died after choking on one. On the Today Show and everything.
We took a road trip to Oregon (from Washington)last New Years. My son (11) wanted an OU sweatshirt, my daughter (6, with a…unique personality) wanted an OSU one. We got them for them. At some point we remarked on the “beaver” on the OSU one. My daughter just stared at us.
“What’s wrong?” we said, “that’s a beaver.”
“A beaver?” she said with disgust, “I thought it was a gerbil.”
To be fair, did DID kind of look like a gerbil.
Tempe Tantrums is brilliant, especially for the cheerleader’s uniforms. I hear the young men and women on Tempe’s squad get right ornery in that heat.
I graduated from Hampton High School, home of the Talbots. What is a Talbot besides an upper middle class, middle aged womans clothing store? It is also a dead dog, extinct actually. We cheered for an extinct English hunting dog. That strikes fear in the hearts of your opponent!
I’ve been reading through your archive and I love your site! I just thought you might like to know that there is in fact a university that uses the Bearcat as a mascot (and I didn’t realize till sophomore year that this was a real animal…)