When coming up with this week’s mascot, we decided to go with a somewhat big time program. How we settled on Florida State’s Chief Osceola and Renegade was much more of a journey. Was it the recent news of sanctions the NCAA put on Florida State that would vacate some victories and take away from Bobby Bowden’s record? Nope. Was it former player and WWE wrestler Ron Simmons and news of his induction into college football hall of fame? Nope. Actually it was the pit stop we made on the way down to our annual float trip. Yup. Thank you Osceola Cheese for this week’s Mascot Monday. DAMN!
So the Mountain West Conference broke down and signed the BCS TV deal and we though we would take a look at one of the conferences more interesting mascots for the week. In the unusual tale of the mascot before the school, the Texas Christian University Super Frog became to pillar of strange and unique mascots. Taking many forms and different names, Super Frog continues to poke around the field cheering on the Horned Frog players. We’ll learn some interesting facts about the horned frog and explore just why a school would name themselves after one. So get ready to shoot blood because here’s the Texas Christian Super Frog.
It’s the after 4th of July recovery and we’re inching ever so close to the start of the 2009 college football season. Since we are getting close and Mascot Monday is reserved for the off season, we are going to profile the mascots of the Big 12 teams favored to win their division, starting with the Kansas Jayhawks very own Big Jay and Baby Jay, with the other Big 12 team coming next month. A Jayhawk has no known animal classification, but stands for something that happened before the Civil War. We’ll figure out what they were thinking way back when and lay a couple of eggs on the way. Get ready, Kansas City, here’s Big Jay and Baby Jay.
Virtually thumbing through the Athlon pre season Top 25 for college football (yes it’s out already), the eyeball rested gently on the the 18th ranked Cincinnati Bearcats. What was a Bearcat? Why was a team from the Big East in the top 25? Did Hannah Barbara have something to do with this? Or maybe it was Al Gore that had a hand in its construction. Why wasn’t the mascot more prominently shown during events? Why am I asking you? Ignoring the lame attempt at a Spaceballs reference, let’s find out all of the answers to the above questions.
Record heat flies by and the next thing you know, a tropical storm drops in outta no where. The rain was swirling from all directions and it almost seemed like a tornado or hurricane was brewing right over Kansas City. I snapped a couple of pics to document the torrential rain. It looks like the light is at the end of the storm. That’s where we are at in college football. We still must weather the baseball season, but basketball and hockey is over. There’s still some storms a brewin’, especially in Manhattan, but we know we are getting ever so closer. Here’s this week’s Crib Sheet:
Social Networking is big here at the KCCGD which is why it’s great to see stuff like Darius Darks of Iowa State using Facebook to garner support for the him and the team. We’re surprised we don’t see official football pages on facebook now and hope that some schools pick it up for the future.
Former Alabama Crimson Tide coach Bill Curry will play his former team in 2010 as the head coach for the first year program Georgia State. It’s always good to see former coaches go against their team. Chances are this game will be out of hand, but an upset would be nice.
Iowa offensive linemen Kyle Calloway got the hook from the cops for tooling around town on a moped while intoxicated. So Kyle will lose a game and get some counselling for running into a barricade on the little bike. The image of a big drunk linemen on a tiny moped is hilarious. Kids: don’t do that at home.
So after the Ron Prince debacle, it seems another former official for the K-State athletic department is getting a sweet deal. Pile that on top of a nasty audit, and what we have here is a good ole fashion free for all in Manhattan. The Purple Yeti will be clutching his checkbook tightly for the next year or two until this gets settled.
Help William & Mary find a new mascot! Since April 1 they’ve been taking submissions and it’s growing everyday. As we’re sure you know about the Mascot Monday here and how mascots are near and dear to our hearts. Take part and let’s see who wins! I’m voting for the question mark.
In the blistering heat of the summer, one can only dream of being in cooler places. Frozen strawberry margaritas help take you there, but actually being there is so much better. Usually this time of the year see the North being the ‘just right’ temperature. Thinking of the chilly north and the strawberry red margarita, it makes sense that this week’s mascot would be none other than Wisconsin’s Bucky Badger. We try to take a cool look at this feisty fella and hopefully stop sweating while doing so.
Through the last couple of months, we’ve looked high and far to bring you many different types of mascots here for Mascot Monday. We emphasize diversity and welcome all types of mascots from every conference, even the Big 10. So when we stumbled across the Campbell University Fighting Camels, we knew that we had to include their mascot. There is only one type of mascot, as the university advertises, they employ. Campbell University takes great pride in employing this mascot. So we follow camel toe and step in introducing to this week’s mascot: Gaylord the Camel.
Summer’s about here and it’s under 3 months before the kickoff of the 2009 football season so we’re gonna hit the mascots hard into the big time and the Oklahoma Sooner’s Sooner Schooner. Sure there are two horses named Boomer and Sooner, but the rickety ole wagon still carries the tradition that we see while we hear the same song over and over again. Last year the Sooners were 2nd in the nation as they were booted by the Florida Gators in the BCS National Championship Game. This year, they hope to do better (and they have a good shot, too) and they’ll be riding the Sooner Schooner the whole way.
It’s College World Series time and while we aren’t too hip on college baseball yet we do want to congratulate the Big 12 on getting EIGHT teams into the College World Series. On a more local note, Kansas State is still alive as they play Rice tonight for a chance to move on to the super regionals. Feeling inspired by that and the scorching weather, this week’s Mascot Monday will take a look at an advancing, number one seeded, Arizona State’s Sparky the Sun Devil. From the iterations of mascots before to the family friendly inspiration of the current Sparky, we can see that this top party school has one spicy meatball of a mascot. So while we are waiting for the football season to start, under 100 days to go by the way, and while we endure the massive ting of the aluminum baseball bat, let’s numb the senses with Sparky.
This Memorial Day we figured we would take a look back into one of the oldest mascots while paying our respects to the military with a retrospective of the Army Black Knights mule and the more recent Blackjack. The prospects of Army playing at the new Yankee Stadium also influenced our pick this week, admittedly. The inclusion of the mule for the Black Knights football team is a great story and the addition of a costumed mascot is a nice side dish to the main mascot course. KCCGD pays its respects and we hope you take some time today to do as well.
Flipping through the Sunday paper, I couldn’t help notice how light it seemed. Not just the whole paper, but specifically the comics section. I remember back in the day there were at least 8 full pages of colorized comics to pour through. Being a kid at the time was great. Nowadays it may be four and many of the classics moved aside to make room for the ‘parents with a newborn’ comic copycats. What does this have to do with mascots? When researching some candidates, I discovered that this week’s inductee just happens to be inspired by a classic comic strip. After reading some more on Peter the Anteater, I knew we had to tell this mascot’s 3 paned story.
The whole family’s here this week as we dive deep into the rich lineage of the Nebraska Cornhusker’s mascots. From the various large headed and skinny legged characters to the current duo, we can see that in the state where college football is a professional and state wide spectacle, the spirit that drives the spectacle shows up in the form of some tacky looking mascots. There is some redemption involved toward the end of this ride, but we still ask, “Do they allow art in Nebraska?” Let’s take a long hard look at Herbie Husker and Lil Red.
Back again this week for Mascot Monday and we just got done finishing off our hankering of curly fries and thickburgers from Hardee’s. The Western Bacon Thickburger is back and the tears of joy from it are still drying off. So when we were coming up with a mascot for the week, we combing the Western and the curly fries and came up with Idaho. Joe Vandal is the man in potato land and we’re gonna take a look at what a Vandal is, where this guy came from, and just why he’s the double for a 1970s Al Pacino. Plus we give tips about growing the greasiest, stringiest mustache out there.
Over the weekend in professional land (NFL), they held the draft and Matthew Stafford gained the honor of being the number one pick for the Detroit Lions. Stafford’s recently former school is the Georgia Bulldogs so this episode of Mascot Monday will take a peek at the dynamic duo of Hairy Dawg and Uga. Uga has a rich history and following. Hairy Dawg is relatively new compared to Uga, but he’s just now turning the corner of mascot-dom. Whether these two will be the number one pick in a mascot draft, we’re unsure of. But word from Kiper tells us they could go top ten.
Hey hey hey! Some mascots practice in the off season to get their moves right. Some study film tapes hard to make sure they are entertaining to the highest degree. Then there are some mascots, like the University of Dayton’s Rudy Flyer, who just chill out and surf the web. Cruising around the internet hitting up social media sites is what he does and when he has to bust a move, he’ll drop it like it’s not. This week we are cruising on autopilot with Rudy Flyer. You are now free to move about the blog.
