Julie Sage
Connector Staff
College Mascots can be incredibly unsettling, even if they’re one of the most lovable ones. But which college mascots are the scariest, and what are their crazy backstories? Here are the top 13 creepiest, weirdest and scariest mascots according to UMass Lowell students.
#13 – Sam the Minuteman (UMass Amherst)
(Photo courtesy of SBNation) “Sam the Minuteman, with a very unsettling smile.”
A familiar face for many students since he is the mascot of another UMass school, but he wasn’t always the mascot. In 1948, the mascot and name of the athletic teams was “Redmen”. But in 1972 the UMass Trustees forced it to change to the Minutemen. There was a huge backlash from students and the athletic department, saying that it was ridiculous that they had little say in the decision over the few students who complained. But luckily, there were others that heavily defended the change. And while the mascot is unsettling, at least it’s better than what it used to be.
#12 – Super Frog (Texas Christian University)
(Photo courtesy of Sportskeeda) “Super Frog, with badly drawn eyes and weird spiky forearms.”
The “Horned Frog” first appeared in 1897 after football was just added to the college and was added to the University seal in 1915. It was chosen as their mascot when their brand-new football field was filled with Horned Lizards, which are also called Horned Frogs in Texas. So, the mascot, even though it is called Super Frog, is a lizard. Which honestly, makes the mascot costume even worse because of inaccuracy.
#11 – Big Red (Western Kentucky University)
(Photo courtesy of ESPN) “Big Red, with a huge mouth that has been seen to eat a ridiculous number of volleyballs.”
He represents their sports team, the “Hilltoppers”, the name coming from the fact that in 1911 the school was moved on top of a hill. In 1979, Ralph Carrey tried making a mascot, but didn’t want to use any known animal and didn’t want to follow any Kentuckian stereotypes. So, he drew a red, furry blob and that became the mascot. Other fun facts about Big Red are that it’s not listed by the school as neither male or female, and it became friends with Grimace during his birthday in 2023.
#10 – Gus T (University of Tulsa)
(Photo Courtesy of University of Tulsa Instagram) “Gus T, which is supposed to be a hurricane, but why does a hurricane need a chin that big.”
He is supposed to be a hurricane (but really looks like a certain emoji) named for their team, the Golden Hurricanes. This was a switch made in 2023, but the university has a huge history of having a lot of switches with questionable choices. Their first mascot was “Hurc the Hurricane” in 1987, which was a hurricane made of golden fur. In 1988, Captain Cane was added as a sidekick to the renamed hurricane, Huffy. In 1997, Captain Cane became the hurricane itself and Huffy retired. In 2009, Captain Cane became a human-looking superhero who was supposedly a freshman student turned superhero due to the crowd cheering through a malfunctioning satellite dish.
#9 – Herky the Hawk (University of Iowa)
(Photo courtesy of Iowa City Press Citizen) “Herky the Hawk, who looks really angry all the time.”
Herky, which is short for Hercules, was made in 1948 from a caricature drawn for the athletic department, and first appeared as a costume in 1959. But Herky would constantly play dangerous pranks on other mascots, so the school banned him. But in the 1980s, he was brought back. The head used to be fiberglass before 2014. In 1997 after a game where they shut out Michigan in a 31-0 game, one of Michigan’s drummers attacked Herky and broke the head into pieces, which Michigan took pieces back home as a trophy. Talk about being sore losers.
#8 – Charlie Cardinal (Ball State University)
(Photo Courtesy of Charlie Cardinal’s Facebook) “Charlie Cardinal, with probably the creepiest eyes in the history of mascots.”
There isn’t much to say about the history of this mascot, except for the fact that the sports team has been known as the Cardinals since 1927, which was previously known as the Hooserions. But the eyes of this unsettling mascot say enough.
#7 – Pistol Pete (Oklahoma State University)
(Photo courtesy of Washington Post) “Pistol Pete, with a very disproportional head compared to his hands.”
In 1923, the school needed a new mascot because previously they just copied Princeton’s tiger. Some students saw Frank Eaton at a parade and asked if they could base the mascot off him, and he agreed. The mascot is named “Pistol Pete” because when Frank Eaton was on his mission to kill his father’s murderers, he trained at Fort Gibson and received the marksman name “Pistol Pete”. Even though this mascot is definitely a bit creepy, he’s still asked to come to local events like weddings.
#6 – Stanford Tree (Stanford University)
(Photo courtesy of Yahoo! Sports) “One of the Stanford Trees, and it’s probably the least scary one out of all of them.”
This probably has the wildest backstory of any mascot. It was created by the band because the school itself didn’t have an official mascot, and it was first created as a joke along with the Steaming Manhole and the French Fry. Students particularly liked the tree though. For some reason, University of California Berkeley students hated this tree, and in one of its first appearances they ran to the field and attacked the tree. Later, other Cal students stole the repaired tree costume from a locked bus, and instead of trying to get it back, this started a tradition of making a new tree every year, of which there are now 45 trees, and some of them are much more frightening than this one. There are continued attacks from Cal students, which has ended in multiple arrests. To be selected as the tree is a dangerous process, to the point that the University added rules of what they can and can’t do during the try outs.
#5 – Nittany Lion (Penn State University)
(Photo courtesy of Mascot Hall of Fame) “Nittany Lion, which seems like a really cheap suit for a school like Penn State.”
It’s supposed to be an Eastern Mountain Lion based on the lions that used to be on Mount Nittany, before they got hunted to extinction. At first, the mascot costume was based of the African Lion, but every time it was worn on the field they lost the game, so it was banned. But in 1939, the lion came back, this time based on the famous taxidermist’s mountain lion from Mount Nittany. But the taxidermy was done in 1856, which explains why this mascot is just so creepy.
#4 – Lil’ Red (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
(Photo courtesy of SBNation) “Lil’ Red looming over one of the children that it was made to look friendly towards.”
While he’s called Lil’ Red, he’s unrelated to Big Red. There isn’t a lot of history behind this mascot either, just that in 1993 there was a contest to make a mascot that would appeal to children, and this is the one that won. Interestingly though, the person inside wears a belt with an air circulation system that brings in 100 cubic feet of air inside per minute so that it doesn’t deflate when he decides to crowd surf.
#3 – Oski the Bear (University of California, Berkeley)
(Photo courtesy of @Oski on X) “Oski the Bear, that looks like something straight out of a mascot-themed horror indie game.”
Oski was originally a caricature for cartoon strips and was meant to be a complete buffoon representing how Cal had some trouble with their football season. But when Oski was introduced as a mascot, they actually won the game that time, so he was kept around. They tend to be very secretive about who is wearing the costume, but in 1995 there was a fistfight between the infamous Stanford Tree and Oski, in which the Tree pulled the mask off, which most likely caused more problems. Because of the secrecy surrounding this mascot, if the person inside needs a drink the eyes are detachable and they drink through the eye sockets, which makes him even scarier.
#2 – Friar Dom (Providence College)
(Photo courtesy of New York Post) “Friar Dom, which is so scary it’s made multiple children cry and the school is running with it for the publicity.”
From 1935 to 2001, they had five different Dalmatians, Friar Boy 1 through 5, as their mascot. But in 2001, the athletic director, Driscoll from University of California Berkley, wanted to make a friar mascot like Oski, which really should have been the tip off. So, they went to Sugar’s Mascot Costumes, who are the same people who made the Snuggles laundry detergent teddy bear, and this is what they received. When Driscoll tried out the prototype on Halloween as a friendly friar, kids ran away screaming, but that didn’t deter him. In 2015, they went to the company again asking for a more muscular version, but friendlier for kids, and when they were given the prototype, the school decided not to use it and stay with this very scary mascot because at least it was memorable.
#1 – Purdue Pete (Purdue University)
(Photo courtesy of Tom Britt on Flickr) “Purdue Pete, the perfect example of why you need at least one artfully inclined person on your team of engineers.”
He’s only the athletic mascot and not the school’s mascot, which is a train. The first mascot was made in 1956, but it was hard to move around in. So, in the 1980s, they let the Aeronautical Engineering Technology department design the head that is known, and feared, today. In 2006 and 2011, there were attempts to make the head soft instead of fiberglass, but both times it was rejected. In 2008 they tried to redesign the head to make it friendlier, but that made many people angry to the point that they were pulling funding from the school, so it was reversed in a month or two. They’ve also listed that anyone can be Purdue Pete, but unsurprisingly, the only people who have gotten it are about six feet tall and weigh 160 pounds.
