The eyes of the college football season are upon us and we are beginning to wipe the eye boogers away to gaze into the crystal ball and see who will come out on top.  Last year, there was a three way tussle in the Big 12 South that left the Texas Longhorns out of the Big 12 title game and out of the National Championship race.  This year they are back with their Heisman runner up in Colt McCoy and are one of the sexy picks for a national title run.  We thought it would be fitting in the last couple of weeks of this year’s Mascot Monday to take a look at the final Mascot we’ll do from the Big 12 from the school that has the best title shot.  So we present to you the famed Bevo and a couple of other mascots that barely have any press or history.

Bevo, believe-o or not, was not the first mascot for the Texas Longhorns.  The first official mascot was a mix pit bull name Pig.  He had his run from 1914 to 1923 when he was run over by a Model T Ford.  The first notion to use a live longhorn as a mascot came courtesy of an alum by the name of Stephen Pinckney in 1916.  “Bo” at the time made his first appearance in 1916 during their Thanksgiving game against Texas A&M.  Texas won, and in the name of revenge, Texas A&M students branded 13-0 on Bo, the score of the game from the year before.  Some people think the Bevo name came from some clever rebranding of the score, but nobody really knows how the name came to be.  There was no brand, as the students fattened up Bevo to serve at a football banquet to hand the hide with the 13-0 back to the Texas A&M students.

Now there are a couple of other mascots but to be frank, Texas University really doesn’t care about them.  Bevo is a nationally known live mascot so it is hard to keep up with the hype.  That said, Texas could do a better job of actually explaining them to the public.  First up, we have Hook ‘Em.  We’re thinking he was born out of some marketing ploy to create a kid friendly lovable plush dude to dance around the stadium and entertain.  We searched high and far and the only information we could find was a this website from what looks like an English writing course.

The other mascot is also on the project page.  This one has no name, sans the university name on the front.  What we have here is a good ole fashion inflatable suit mascot.  We’ve talked about inflatable suits before and still find it hard to really get into them.  It’s the cop out of mascots.  Make them wear the fuzzy stuff instead of the big air stuff.  Then again, when you have to compete with Bevo, you gotta take every advantage on your plate.  Bevo is really the main mascot so we’ll just ignore these two.

Back in the day, Bevo was known to be a very rowdy fella.  Many earlier Bevos broke free of captivity and ran amuck on the field or even the Texas University campus.  The tradition of toughness fell in line with how Bevo would run amuck.  Nowadays he’s a little more tame, making appearances to graduation events and even for some weddings.  That’s not to say he gets spooked every once in awhile, like at a recent Rice University football game.

Whether you hate the Longhorns or love them, Bevo stands tall as one of the major live mascots in college football. We’d like to think he would be in the running if Capital One ever had a Live Mascot of the Year.  That said, we’re not sure he’s the number one mascot in the Big 12, but we’ll leave that cliffhanger a hangin’ for next year.  Until then, enjoy the tough Texan’ in Bevo and try to ignore the other mascot distractions on the field.