Zippy & The Top College Football Mascots Ranked

Dead Last Place: Bevo, Texas Longhorns

There's 351 Division I schools, and Bevo comes in dead last. Not only is having an actual living, gigantic animal as your mascot a fundamentally stupid idea, it lacks any sort of creativity or fun.

Bevo is mean and infamously attacked Uga, Georgia's bulldog on the sideline of the 2019 Sugar Bowl.

Also, what the hell is this thing? A bull? A moose? Some sort of mutant horse? Totally not cool and I hate it. 0/10.

No. 5: Mike The Tiger, LSU Tigers

Mike the Tiger is so cool, he doesn't even show up to games anymore.

In 2016, LSU stopped bringing Mike, a real tiger, to the sidelines after nearly a decade of pressure from PETA. His trailer would be surrounded with cheerleaders and would sit right near the opposing team's tunnel. Probably pretty crazy to take the field against an actual tiger.

Now, Mike lives in a $3 million habitat that sits near Tiger Stadium. Tigers are dope, and it's awesome that Mike has his own baller habitat where he can watch the games in peace.

No. 4: Brutus The Buckeye, Ohio State

I could not publish this on an Ohio website without Brutus mentioned.

He's literally just a nut with legs, and there's not much more to him. Brutus is perfect for the state of Ohio, as we are a comparatively straight-forward group of people.

I feel like Gene Smith just gives a scholarship to a kid who wasn't quite good enough to be on the gymnastics team to be Brutus, because I've seen him do some absolutely bizarre things.

Brutus is an Ohio icon. Plain and simple.

No. 3: Gus The Gorilla, Pittsburgh State

Division II athletics getting some love on this list because Gus the Gorilla is absolutely hysterical to me.

Someone from Pittsburgh State literally went to Party City and bought the gorilla suit for $99 and threw a 2XL t-shirt from the bookstore on it. Boom. Mascot. Done.

Oh yeah, and he wears sunglasses, because why the hell not?

Just the thought of a Sasquatch-type figure frolicking through campus handing out t-shirts to high school seniors on a college tour cracks me up for some reason.

Gus makes absolutely no sense at all and that's what makes him great.

No. 2: Otto The Orange, Syracuse

Literally an orange. Because Syracuse, New York is so well-known for their citrus.

Otto the Orange replaced an unpopular Roman gladiator mascot that was regularly booed and heckled by students. Then, a literal orange beat out a wolf or a lion to become the mascot, which were also up for consideration.

When Otto was announced in the early 1980s, he was described as a, "juiced-up, bumbling citrus fruit from which two legs protrude."

Damn straight.

Students that want to be Otto cannot be taller than 5-foot-9. Representation for the vertically challenged folks like myself earned Otto the No. 2 spot on this list.

No. 1: Zippy, The University of Akron

I went to Kent State, and I have no shame in saying that Zippy is absolutely dope.

Maybe if Kent State would move away from the Golden Flashes, an eagle that nobody knows is an eagle, and fully embraces the Black Squirrels as their mascot, my feeling on this could waver.

The Akron Zips don't make any sense anyway, as I have no clue what a Zip is. So, having a kangaroo as a mascot instead of someone's crotch zipper is a hell of a lot cooler to me.

Also, Zippy is a female mascot, hence her pouch. Off the top of my head, I can't think of another school that uses a lone female mascot without a male companion. Or a kangaroo. Well done, Akron.

There's a million tigers, eagles, and bears. But there's only one Zippy.

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