Mascots & Memory

Having the entire internet in your pocket is not like having just what you want

I have a party trick. It is a skill I have shown off in bars since college, and my track record is almost perfect. It’s the ability to name the mascot of any major college in America. I know them like a chemist knows the periodic table of elements.

From Roadrunners to Chanticleers, if the team plays Division I football, the chances I can pull its nickname out of my mental hard drive is so high, you should stake a side wager on me. Even if the university is from a lower division, I still may help you cash.

Stephen F. Austin University - the Lumberjacks, if you did not already know - stumped me one time, but that’s about it.

My mascot mastery is the product of studying The Peek’Size Football Guide. For over 80 years, this paper booklet, small enough to fit in a shirt pocket, was distributed annually in regionalized versions, mostly in the south. I devoured every issue as a kid.

Using tiny 7-point type, the Peek’Size Guide was chock full of information on every college football program, and every high school program in the various distribution regions. Team colors, location, stadium name, mascot, head coach, schedule, last year’s record, last year’s results – it was all there, and for every team.

The guide’s changed little from year to year, always based on vintage art of a stadium, drawn in the manner of a 1940s postcard.

My dad would pick up the Peek’Size at the credit union, a sponsor of the East Tennessee version, in which I could find the schedule for my hometown Harriman High School Blue Devils, just a few pages away from the Wofford College Terriers, or the Ohio State Buckeyes. Later I ordered them by mail.

Printer Earnest Wilburn Peek came up with the guide as an advertising novelty and it lasted almost a century. Like convention halls and door-to-door salesmen, the pandemic crippled the business model of the Peek’Size Guide. It shut down in 2023, a loss I feel in summer when I got the itch for football and fall.

All the same information in the little book is available online of course. But it is hard to beat tangible, tactile pages to turn – and everything organized just so, in a pocketable size smaller than a smartphone.

My favorite mascots are unique to their locales and grounded in history. I cheer for the Tennessee Volunteers, so named for my people’s propensity to sign up for the military. The New Mexico Lobos, Delaware Blue Hens, Wake Forest Demon Deacons, Holy Cross Crusaders, Miami Hurricanes and Nebraska Cornhuskers all get thumbs up from me.

My teenaged son, also a sports junkie, joined my mascot hobby young, gravitating to funky names of minor league baseball teams. The Rocket City Trash Pandas in Huntsville is one of his favorites – though like the Hub City Spartanburgers and many other bush league tags, the name is grounded in merchandise sales more than regional history.

Developmental baseball clubs have always had unique names, however, even before the advent of swiping right on Instagram to buy neon swag. In the first half of the last century, low-level baseball teams were named for the day-job occupations of their part-time players. Small town team jerseys told the economic stories of their towns. In the pre-war era, my home state claimed the Springfield Blanket Makers, who competed in the KITTY League against the Owensboro Distillers and Mayfield Clothiers of Kentucky and the Harrisburg Coal Miners from Illinois.

The ballpark where my old high school still plays is called Papermakers Park – a tribute to the semi-pro mill team that played there before I was born, and to the Mead paperboard plant that made the whole town smell like sulfur until NAFTA took care of that problem.

You still see a vestige of this occupational mascot method in the NFL’s Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers, proud old franchises in places where the past is not quite past.

The opposite of this tradition is Major League Soccer. At its founding in 1996, its nicknames were rational, if irritatingly bent toward collective nouns: the Dallas Burn, Columbus Crew, Los Angeles Galaxy, New England Revolution, San Jose Clash, Tampa Bay Mutiny, and Kansas City Wiz. I am not wholly against collective nouns as nicknames, but they confuse me. What should I call one member of the Burn? A Burner? A Flame? And what is a single Wiz? A Wizard?

As the soccer league evolved, it mimicked the dumb structure of European soccer club names. The Dallas Burn became just FC Dallas, which presumably stands for “Football Club Dallas” – an ignorant choice since all Americans know that title can only belong to the Cowboys. Ten different MLS teams use the malapropism “FC” in their names now, 11 if you count Montreal’s French-ified version “CF” – with no fearsome or historic mascot to go with it. Only a third of current MLS clubs have a mascot name at all, and only six of them are rationally plural, with an “s” at the end. Do these people not get America?

I would not raise this admittedly jingoistic pet peeve except for the fact that I must wade past these silly soccer names on sports apps I use to check college football schedules on my smartphone.

Having the entire internet in your pocket is not nearly as good as having exactly what you want. Where is that Peek’Size Guide when I need it?

Go Vols.

In Case You Missed It: The federal government is shut down and it’s the first shutdown ever that Democrats have been in no hurry to end. There’s a lot of performative dance happening in the party with two left feet. Check out SHUTDOWN SCHUMER from last week for my take.

Will This Still Be A Job?: One great thing about having teenage kids is you get to talk to a lot of teenagers. It strikes me they are asking a lot more, and deeper, questions about the career consequences of A.I. than, say, Congress is, which is maybe not optimal. MAMAS DON’T LET YOUR BABIES GROW UP TO BE WRITERS hit on some of that, but three recent trips to visit collegians this last few weeks has driven it home.

The Archive: All 49 of the columns are up on The What For website. Poke around. Check ‘em out. See what you missed.