Mad for Mascots
Photo Credit: Adapted by the Beachcomber
Mad for Mascots
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January 27, 2012 • Gyasi Redding, Staff Reporter
Filed under Sports, Top Stories
On January 2, college bowl season concluded with Alabama’s 21-0 defeat of LSU in the Allstate BCS National Championship. With all of the universities that have been on display for the last few weeks, there has been a lot of talk about mascots. Some schools have very recognizable mascots, such as the Florida Gators or Oregon Ducks. However, some mascots leave us puzzled, and I think it’s time to try and get some much-needed answers about them.
Let’s begin with our new champion, Alabama. They’re known as the Crimson Tide, but their school mascot in an elephant. It would seem that the two are unrelated, but that can’t really be confirmed, seeing as how no one is sure what a “Crimson Tide” is. Another mascot enigma among the college ranks is the Stanford Cardinal. Sure, many teams use the Cardinal as their symbol, such as the St. Louis baseball team and Arizona’s NFL team. However, Stanford’s mascot is no bird, it’s a tree. That’s right, a tree can be seen patrolling the sideline and celebrating with players at Stanford’s football games, and is seen as one of the more ridiculous mascots in all of sports.
Puzzling mascots even appear in the professional realm, for instance the Tennessee Titans of the NFL. There isn’t much confusion about what a titan actually is, as most football fans recognize the creatures of Greek mythology. The first team to use the name was actually the AFL’s Titans of New York, who adopted the name because they knew they would be competing for fans with the NFL’s New York Giants, and decided that the only thing bigger than a giant would be a titan. Now that the name has moved on to Tennessee, many feel it could be better-represented. The team’s logo does not feature a titan, but instead shows a T inside of a fireball, sometimes atop a large sword. The team’s physical mascot is actually a fox, which just adds to the confusion.
The plot thickens with more questionable mascots, right here in our own school district. SDUSD high schools feature some classic mascots, such as the Buccaneers and Patriots, but one in particular seems to be an outlier. Point Loma’s mascot is a pointer. No, not a person that’s just standing there and pointing; it’s a hunting dog. Pointers use their excellent sense of smell to guide their owners to prey, hence the pointing. These canines can often be found in forests, where hunting game is common. Apparently, Point Loma’s founders wanted to bring the pointer to the lush forests of…..San Diego? Our good friends abide by the philosophy that “Every Man’s A Pointer”,which didn’t take into account the implications for our fairer sex. However, we are not here to poke fun, only to ponder the thought process behind these mascots, which in the aforementioned’s case appears to be a very short one. Maybe these mascots were chosen specifically to stand out from the others, or maybe they were just all out of good mascots when their creators went to the Idea Store. Whatever the case, I’m sure they will continue to be second-guessed as long as they exist, which seems to have been the intention. Thank goodness our own mascot is such a tough, intimidating figure. Go Bucs! In past years, administrations wouldn’t even let us have a sword in our logo, indeed, one wonders how a Buccaner would be a bloody mercenary holding a pencil. Avast! I will stab you with my, notebook?
And it doesn’t stop there, folks. Unbelievably, there are some schools out there with even weirder names and mascots. One of the most important parts of a team’s name is that it represents the area they come from. Some teams play for a single city, such as the Oklahoma City Thunder, and some play for a much larger area like the New England Patriots. Well, what happens when a team doesn’t claim the city the play in? Awkward, right? Well, there happens to be two cases like this in the NFL. The Jets and Giants both claim New York as their home town, but the teams share a stadium in New Jersey. There’s something wrong with that picture. In fact, the only team that actually plays in New York is the Buffalo Bills, who are content with keeping their fan base in, well, Buffalo. But that’s an issue for their owners to figure out.
The point is, teams and schools choose to name and represent themselves in a wide, wide variety of ways. Sometimes, lots of times, it may seem like the wrong decision was made with a certain name or mascot, but who are we to really judge? If UC Santa Cruz wants to be the Banana Slugs, I say let them do it. But I also say mean things about them behind their back. Free country right? If you ever get the chance to create your own school or sports franchise, I hope you’ll consider this article before deciding what name to stick them with forever.
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