SI’s Mascot List: Some Hits And Misses

There’s a lot of mascots left off but of all of them: no Demon Deacon?

Usually Sports Illustrated is pretty good about stuff like this but their Top Ten mascots is pretty weak.

The only ACC team on the list is Syracuse. We respect Syracuse and what they’ve brought to the ACC, but that is one ugly mascot. It’s gotten better over the years but at the end of the day, it’s just fruit. And lumpy fruit at that.

There are basically two kinds of mascots: live animals and, well, stuff like fruit. Essentially local oddities, some of which can be very charming.

On the live side, SI’s list includes dogs, a buffalo, a bull and a tiger. The oddities include Otto the Orange, Stanford’s tree, WKU’s Big Red, South Carolina’s Cocky the Gamecock and Oregon’s Duck, which Walt Disney personally let OU use.

If it were us, we’d certainly have listed Wake Forest’s Demon Deacon - that’s a winner. Anyone who ever saw the Dancing Deacon would make him a special entry on this list.

We might have put the St. Louis Billikens on here too and it’s hard to see how you could leave the Campbell Camel off too.

That said, it’s a subjective list and anyone would do it to their own taste.