MASCOT ALERT!!!! Wolverine mascot-guy spotted. (No joke)
Not kidding here. I'm facebook friends with an athletic department employee who is down with the Cheerleading team in Daytona Beach at the National Cheer and Dance Championships (at which they were going for our fifth National Championship in a row but finished in 3rd). Was just watching the post with their routine and there absolutely positively a guy in a "wolverine" costume and a #17 Michigan jersey doing the routines with our cheer team during the competition. Checked their twitter account and it wasn't the same post or routine. In the one I saw on Facebook they appeared to be outside in a band shell looking thing. Will try to get a screen shot and post but its definitely there. Is this the furry face of things to come?
I guess the giant Maize Kraft Noodle is no longer the official mascot of the Michigan Wolverines ...grumble grumble
He's no Scrotie. Best mascot in college sports.
Can't we just keep the Yips?
It's not.
They have to have a mascot to be entered into that competition. It's strictly for that NCA competition.
I had this thread years ago.
I'm usually the one defending it being okay to call anything people want a "sport." Having said that, requiring a person dressing up in an animal/caricature kind of costume in order to be eligible for said "sport" kind of calls its legitimacy into question.
Yep. This is not a "sport" any more than anything related to a marching band is a "sport" (sorry flag corps and drumline people). They're performance genres.
Don't get this one at all, or why the Athletic Department would want to put their imprint behind something that requires a mascot that the fanbase clearly and historically has not wanted. Canham, after all, just about had Willie the Wolverine taken behind the Grad Library and shot when people tried to make that a thing. This is no better. But, apparently, is now legitimate.
Good lord you're insufferable.
They use a mascot for like 1 week, for 1 cheerleading competition. It's been going on for years now, and no mascots have ever shown up on the sidelines.
It's better than "Willie", and using this in a competition doesn't make a gameday mascot "legitimate".
Also, nobody except you and the other poster you replied to has called it a sport
"ESPN has televised it."
Yes, like bowling and jarts.
I think it would be a nice wrinkle for hurdles.
You have obviously never watched a cheer competition in the last 10 years to still hold that belief. If you believe gymnastics is a sport than cheer is just a team gymnastics event whereby everyone on the team is competing at the same time.
I don't even know how to respond to this. I wasn't calling into question the actual "sport"ness of cheer competition. I even said I'm usually the guy that defends that kind of thing. I merely think it's ridiculous that the "sport" is degraded by requiring a mascot in order for a team to be eligible. It would be as ridiculous as saying your team wasn't allowed to play football unless your field was also a display screen playing children's cartoons.
Nobody did call it a sport...
I will and go ahead because it is.
No one would be able to fathom how much work that team does and what kind of schedule they have.
Think of the day-to-day life of a Varsity athlete at Michigan that practices and does S&C workouts along with their classes, and then add in the fact that they also have to go and cheer on other teams at Michigan as part of their sport. And this one competition is what they train for all year long during practice.
A good friend of mine has been on the team for two seasons now.
It's been a Varsity sport since 2012, along with Dance. The upcoming new multi-sport arena is going to be built to also house those two teams.
Antonio Malkoun.
FYI, it wasn't my intention to denigrate how much work/effor they put into it. I didn't know it had "varsity" status with the school
I knew some engineering student cheerleaders when I was an undergrad and they had access to all of the same benefits as other athletes (e.g. the Ross Academic Center), fwiw.
I don't mind your defense in principle, but I think your use of hyperbole went a little far.
"No one would be able to fathom..."? Not Tom Brady, not SEALs, not Jim Harbaugh, etc?
I am sure they work extremely hard (literally, near one extreme of the range of work), but I think lots of other folks do too.
I just down voted your linked post because now, with new information I just received today, it turns out that your panic over the potential new mascot was pure speculation and ambulance-chasing.
In that case, dump the furry suit and just run out a guy in a big Jim Harbaugh costume.
That's coming the moment he welcomes Red back...
When in doubt, we should probably just run these things past WD. Not much gets by him....
If I was with the cheerleading team in Daytonia Beach at the "National Cheer and Dance Championship," I wouldn't notice a male mascot in a Wolverine costume if it fell on my face and started wiggling...
Would be Michigan-appropriate!
http://cryptozoologynews.com/man-releases-pictures-two-possible-bigfoot…
(In related news, wow, these people are actually serious...)
What's funny is that I realized that this competition - which is about this time of the year and requires us to fake the whole mascot thing - would mean that this thread was bound to appear almost like clockwork. This blog, in its own amusing way, has a certain predictability about these things.
Found the video on Facebook. Not great quality but there is definitely some kind of animal mascot there.
You know it's the offseason when Mgoblog has threads that feature Zapruder film breakdowns of cheerleading competitions to determine the quality and/or permanence of a guy or gal in a mascot costume.
That tumble was back and to the left. Back... and to the left...
Great minds think alike.
you can get a better idea of what the mascot looks like. I'm in.
Dude, you're watching dance / cheerleading!? So you must be the guy who goes down to his local Elementary School and leaves a trail of candy that leads to a pile in his lap? Creepy Yo!