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You probably missed it. Either because you were too distracted by the ongoing goings-on of conference media days, or perhaps because you miss a lot of stuff because your peripheral vision is perpetually hindered by tiny papier-mâché eye slots or swatches of flappy faux fur. But last week, the college mascots of America gathered in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to dance. And dance. And dance. No matter how big or felt-covered their feet might be.
As we watched the collegiate creatures cut a rug (not to mention their minor league baseball counterparts win the post-Coldplay interwebs), it got us thinking. No, not NIL/revenue sharing/eyes-glazed-over thinking. Fun thinking. Well, fun until we make one of them mad and they come for us in the night with those googly eyes.
Who is the greatest college football mascot in all the land?
It’s a complicated question. So, taking a page from the expanded CFP playbook and trying to make it fair, we made it even more convoluted. In a mascot multiverse made up of so many mixed-up monsters, mammals and miscellany, we decided to break up the discussion into five categories.
If you’d like to turn this into a bracket and sort out the champ, go for it. We’re going to stick with the divisions. Because we don’t want to wake up one morning to find that Cal Poly’s Musty the Mustang has left one of his horse heads in our bed.
Costume Division
5. Keggy the Keg, Dartmouth
For decades, Dartmouth, which dropped the symbol and nickname “Indians” from its sports teams in the early 1970s, had no mascot to go with its new moniker “The Big Green.” But in 2003, an on-campus humor magazine debuted an anthropomorphic beer keg and named it Keggy the Keg. And yes, that is the most Ivy League sentence I have ever written.
To no one’s surprise, the still-new internet made Keggy famous. Also to no one’s surprise, Dartmouth administrators didn’t like that. Despite the foamy resistance and its ongoing status as an unofficial mascot, there aren’t many events where Keggy isn’t serving up cold and refreshing support for the Big Green.
4. The Stanford Tree
Different coast, similar story. Stanford also ditched the “Indians” name and mascot in the early ’70s, and while the name “Cardinal” was adopted, the always quirky Stanford band pitched a series of mascots during halftime shows that members believed represented life on the campus known as The Farm. The Steaming Manhole, French Fry, Robber Barons, Spikes and Huns all failed to receive official status. But in 1975, a janky homemade tree started dancing around and has been gyrating in Palo Alto ever since.
The new mascot is chosen each year during “Tree Week” with the candidates auditioning in their own self-constructed costumes. The Tree also has never received official status, since the team is the Cardinal, and if you are looking for an actual cardinal, it can be found in an actual tree.
3. Big Red, Western Kentucky
Unlike Keggy and the Tree, Big Red isn’t homemade, he just looks like he is. Western Kentucky is home of the Hilltoppers, and in 1979 a student was charged with producing a mascot that embodied the Hilltopper spirit. Ralph Carey sketched out a red blob and built it with $300 worth of stuff he bought at a hardware and craft store.
The result is a creature that is nothing, but also everything. I’m not saying WKU’s Big Red eyeball helmets of 2024 were the greatest lids in college football history. But I’m also not saying they weren’t.
Big Red 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘴 all 👀 pic.twitter.com/jsztJjJTzQ
— WKU Football (@WKUFootball) October 3, 2024
2. Brutus, Ohio State
As hard as it is to believe, before 1965 there was no mascot in Columbus. After flirting with the idea of bringing a live buck onto the sidelines of the Horseshoe, a student vote settled on Buckeyes, honoring the official state tree of Ohio, and the name Brutus.
Over the years, Brutus generally has been considered the template for the “person in clothes but with a huge plastic head” model for modern mascot business. Thankfully, Brutus has experienced some extreme cranial makeovers — and shrinkage — through the ages. The O.G. O-H-I-O Buckeye looked more like a chocolate bonbon bowling ball than a fearsome football foe.
1. The Duck, Oregon
We promise we’re not just doing this because Walt Disney helped Oregon devise its mascot (and ESPN is a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Co.). We’re doing it because as much as Brutus showed the sideline way, the Duck has written the book on how to be a feathered friend to one’s fan base in the modern era, from holding signs over Lee Corso’s shoulder on “College GameDay” to the stadium entrance GIF that every human with a smartphone has either seen or used.
The Duck would have an aviary argument to be in this spot simply based on his surprise photo bomb tour of the stadiums of the Big Ten prior to Oregon joining the league one year ago. Just this week the Duck has ducked down to Australia and, of course, taken all photos in Southern Hemisphere form.
˙ʎɐʍ ʎqɐllɐʍ ᘔ߈ ‘uɐɯɹǝɥs ˙d pic.twitter.com/FmwSXk9OzZ
— The Duck (@TheOregonDuck) July 20, 2025
Mechanized Division
5. Cocky in the Cockaboose, South Carolina
Cocky is one of America’s most underrated costume mascots, with a Big Red-like bouncy body and the biggest feet this side of Shaquille O’Neal. Prior to every game at Williams-Brice Stadium, amid the stirring sounds of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Cocky rides onto the field in a train pulling a red caboose, a nod to the folks in the “Cockaboose” luxury boxes partying outside the stadium, and escorting Gamecocks celebs, from Marcus Lattimore to Darius Rucker.
4. Monte on a Harley, Montana
Monte, which is short for Montana (duh), is a grizzly (duh) who has been known to enter Washington-Grizzly Stadium atop and astride more high-powered machinery than can be found in Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s garage. His most famous entrances have been on a custom-made Harley-Davidson, but he has also had his paws around the throttle of ATVs, the tailgate of a pickup truck and the reins of a horse, long brown mane bouncing in the wind like Chewbacca behind the wheel of the Millennium Falcon.
3. Demon Deacon on a chopper, Wake Forest
Every autumn Saturday, the brick walls around Winston-Salem are rattled by the black and gold hog wheeled by the Demon Deacon. It’s a custom-built machine that could have come from the Johnny Cash song “One Piece at a Time” with what looks like an amalgamation of a Kawasaki Vulcan 800, Captain America’s rig from “Easy Rider” and whatever was left over from one of Evel Knievel’s crashes in the 1970s.
2. Buzz in the Ramblin’ Wreck, Georgia Tech
Keeping it in the ACC, Georgia Tech sticks to the Deep South tradition of having multiple mascots inspired by songs, stories and stuff that people forgot the details about long ago. Buzz is a yellow jacket, a name attached to Tech since students started attending games in the 1890s wearing, yes, yellow jackets. Around that same time, the “Ramblin’ Wreck” was conjured as a nod to the school’s legendary engineering program and makeshift vehicles pieced together by students during overseas projects. The current ride is a 1930 Ford Model A Sport coupe that has led the team on the field since 1961. Buzz has been hitching rides on the back since 1972.
1. Sooner Schooner, Oklahoma
Since 1964, a slightly shrunken Studebaker Conestoga wagon pulled by a pair of ponies named Boomer and Sooner has hammered its way onto the field before Oklahoma football games, a la the Oklahoma Territory Land Run of 1889. It is steered by the peerless RUF/NEKS, the school’s rootin’-tootin’ spirit squad. When it works, it’s awesome. When it doesn’t, it’s pretty scary … but still pretty awesome.
Human Division
5. Vili the Warrior, Hawai’i
A staple of Hawai’i home games for years, Vili the Warrior (aka Vili Fehoko) was so amazing that he makes this list even though he hasn’t been on the Warriors sideline since 2011. His drumming and leading of traditional islander chants at a local Polynesian education center earned him an invite onto the field from the coaching staff of June Jones. There, he taught an entire stadium through his performances of the haka, a war chant that encapsulated Hawai’i’s feelings of native pride and captured the attention of America when the team earned a BCS-crashing invite to the 2008 Sugar Bowl and Vili performed before the game.
Today, Fehoko has crowds chanting around the NFL, where his son Breiden plays nose tackle, most recently for the Steelers. With a new Hawai’i stadium slated to come online by 2028, maybe let’s get Vili to coach up a new generation of Vili Warriors?
4. Osceola, Florida State
Few pregame moments are as dramatic as when this Florida State student rides out onto the field on Renegade the horse and spikes an actual flaming spear into the 50-yard line at Doak Campbell Stadium, especially if he rides too close to an unknowing sportswriter who has wandered in his way like an idiot … not that I ever did that. Though some members of the Seminole tribe have expressed concerns about the portrayal, tribe leadership has long officially endorsed the tribute to their legendary leader and the university is quick to state that the Seminoles “are not our mascots, they are our partners.”
3. Masked Rider, Texas Tech
Dressed in black with a scarlet cape, this black-masked gaucho gallops into Lubbock atop a trusty black steed, the first college mascot to ride horseback, predating Chief Osceola and USC’s Traveler. What started as a prank — a student with a borrowed horse and a cape made in the home economics department suddenly riding across the field during a game — has become the Zorro of college sports.
2. The Mountaineer, West Virginia, and Davy Crockett, Tennessee
I can already see my mentions from by-god WVU and my fellow Tennessee alums for the sharing of this spot, but two rowdy mountain men in coonskin caps who wield custom-built mountaineer rifles? I’ll take my chances with those dudes walking into any tense situation, especially a football Saturday.
Back in the day, those rifles worked. Still one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen was at Boston College in the early days of the Big East football conference. Whenever West Virginia scored — and that day, it was a lot — that Mountaineer would blast his powder musket and those poor startled people of Chestnut Hill were convinced the Redcoats were back in town.
1. The Notre Dame Leprechaun
For years, Notre Dame’s only mascot was an Irish terrier. But in 1964, an artist was commissioned to come up with a leprechaun design that first landed on the cover of Time magazine and then found its way onto the South Bend sideline.
In the beginning, candidates were expected to be short and redheaded, and they had to grow a chinstrap beard, but in the years since, there have been female and African American leprechauns. As long as they can survive the spring tryout gauntlet of Notre Dame trivia, 50 pushups and their best Irish jig, they have a chance to share a field with Marcus Freeman and Rudy.
Live Animal Division
5. War Eagle, Auburn
There are more actual birds to choose from than most might realize, from the Falconry of Air Force to Sir Big Spur, a Gamecock so beloved that it triggered a feud in South Carolina. But anyone who has ever been in the presence of the War Eagle knows that size does matter, whether the eagle is swooping its way around Jordan-Hare Stadium during pregame festivities or is perched on the arm of one of its keepers from Auburn University’s Raptor Center, which rescues and heals birds of all types. When either Aurea or Independence opens its wings, you understand why forest animals learn how to hide. It’s scary.
4. Mike the Tiger, LSU
Speaking of size, Mike VII of Baton Rouge weighs in at 420 pounds. The size of his head alone is intimidating. His habitat is also massive, a 15,000-foot custom-built enclosure that’s across the street from Death Valley and operated by the school’s veterinary school. He has such a close relationship with the students assigned to take care of him that he knows the sound of their cars when they arrive.
3. Bevo, Texas
Meanwhile, Bevo, the longhorn who made his first appearance on a Longhorns sideline in 1916, has his own section of a ranch, located about 45 minutes away from Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium. He weighs more than 1,700 pounds and has horns that span 58 inches. There is an entire association dedicated to his care, an entire scholarship in his name and an entire streak of cold blood still in the veins of anyone who was at the 2019 Sugar Bowl when he charged at another live mascot. That’s called game face.
2. Ralphie, Colorado
Speaking of charging, Ralphie, the furry face of Colorado football, doesn’t weigh quite as much as Bevo, tipping the scales at around 1,200 pounds. But while Bevo mostly stands there, in Boulder, she — yes, she — carries that load onto the field at 25 mph, steered (hopefully) by four handlers.
My father, a former college football official, tells a story about the logistics meeting held the night before the 1990 Orange Bowl, a game between Colorado and Notre Dame with heavy national title implications. Everyone in the room was perfectly clear on every detail of the night but one. As the meeting wrapped up, Fighting Irish head coach Lou Holtz stood and shouted, “Wait! How the hell does this work with the buffalo?!” Everyone laughed. Then they realized Holtz was serious.
1. Uga, Georgia
Despite Bevo’s best efforts, the pampered bulldog who lives “between the hedges” is still the leader of college football’s animal kingdom. The Seiler family of Savannah is keeper of the direct Uga bloodline that runs back to the 1950s, bringing His Royal Mugness up to Athens on game weekends, where he has the presidential suite in the on-campus hotel (Rece Davis was once booted from that room to accommodate the dog, for real) and a customized SUV traveling compartment and hangs out in a temperature-controlled doghouse during games. Uga wasn’t the first dog mascot (shoutout to Yale’s Handsome Dan) and he is one of dozens of college canines, but he’s still top dog.
Bonus: Non-Football Division
5. Fighting Okra, Delta State
It’s a giant okra that wears boxing gloves fighting its way through Mississippi. What else could you want?
4. King Triton, UC-San Diego
It’s a giant undersea king with a trident who looks like he might break into song at any moment, or yell at Ariel for bringing all that junk into the house. What else could you want?
3. Sammy the Slug, UC-Santa Cruz
It’s a giant yellow mollusk that was featured on the T-shirt worn by John Travolta in “Pulp Fiction.” What else could you want?
2. The Gael, Saint Mary’s College
It’s a giant, jacked Irish warrior who looks like a 1980s barbarian action hero, inspired by a nickname given to the school by Grantland Rice, aka the greatest American sportswriter who ever lived. What else could you want?
1. Friar Dom, Providence
It’s a giant Dominican friar with a fixed face of fear and eyeballs so huge that it looks as if he is peering into your damned, sinful soul. What else could you want? Actually, a lot. He stared me down during an NCAA tournament game a decade ago and I haven’t slept through the night since.