I was underwhelmed by the selection of NCAA basketball mascots in [Wednesday’s] spread. This year’s fans will see only depressingly familiar matchups instead of any millions of more dramatic interspecies battles possible in nature. Of 64 institutions of higher learning, only one (Stanford), was creative enough to choose a representative (a tree) not classified in Kingdom Animalia from among thousands of Earth’s other fearsome options.
Within the animal offerings, too, there was startlingly little variation among the choices. I counted 12 birds, 11 cats, 10 dogs, 5 bears, and only 8 from every other animal species combined. What could explain such a narrow, banal assortment?
Surely these university taxonomists are familiar with the Venus Flytrap? The Water Moccasin? The Assassin Bug? But indeed it gets worse, as there was in fact one other animal species chosen as frequently as birds. Homo sapiens, in its infinite vanity, assigned human or humanoid mascots to its self-indulgent schools one dozen times within the NCAA top 64.
Mascot, play thyself. You’ll have to.
— Matthew Savard, 37,
Mount Prospect
