Mascots in College Sports
While it is nearly impossible to separate US sports teams today from their respective mascots, the concept actually dates back to a 19th century French opera, La Mascotte. Loosely translated to “lucky charm,” La Mascotte depicts a poor farmer whose luck turned when he was visited by a mysterious stranger. By the 1900s, the term mascot came to describe a talisman that brought good fortune; today, the term seems to be synonymous with branding. According to Michael Lewis, a marketing professor at Emory, mascots “work because they give something for the community to rally around, something for everyone to have in common…It’s a social point for the university and the community” (Vrabel, 2017).
In college sports, the first mascot was likely Handsome Dan, a bulldog that belonged to a member of the Yale class of 1892. References of Arkansas’s live mascot date back to the early 1900s, when they switched their nickname from the Cardinals to the Razorbacks. In 2020, the names of universities have become interchangeable with their mascot, allowing students to identify with their school, each other, and alumni. However, many of the mascots we are familiar with today would be unrecognizable to the first students that attended these institutions.