The 20 worst sports mascots of all time

If the goal of this mascot is to incite repentance in the students of Providence College, it likely does the opposite. Seeing Friar Dom makes people irrationally angry because it’s such a bizarre mascot. 

With more eyes on women’s sports than ever before, we’re also learning about some of the oddities of the teams, like the Indiana Fever mascot Freddy Fever. What on Earth is he? Is he running a temperature? His only saving grace is Mini Freddy, who’s at the games on occasion. 

No offense to the state of Indiana, but their mascots are very bad. No amount of backstory can convince us otherwise. 

Team names and mascots should both be intimidating. They should incite fear into their opponents. Wichita State University did well in choosing the Shockers as their team name, but they really dropped the ball with WuShock. He is scary in the wrong way. 

We’ll give it to Bernie Brewer. He is entertaining. But he is ridiculous. Is he a brewer himself? Or is he just there to distract fans when the Brewers aren’t playing well? This mascot brings up far too many questions. 

Choosing a mascot according to what your school’s area is known for is understandable, but too often, it results in something super lame. There’s no better example than Stanford Tree, the Stanford University mascot. The Stanford Tree is not intimidating, just odd. 

This may stir up strong emotions in some: Fans ride hard for Cyril the Swan. But a swan of any sort is a terrible mascot. Although swans actually can be quite aggressive, they’re not known for their aggression, and choosing a mascot should be 99% about image. 

We know that some thought was put into ideating Blue Blob because the people at Xavier wanted another mascot that isn’t as scary as D’Artagnan, but surely they could’ve come up with something better than this. Blue Blob adds nothing. 

Fighting Okra is another great example of missing the mark when trying to use your school’s geography to land on a mascot. Okra has no business being a mascot. It can be a concession stand specialty, but it doesn’t need to be a mascot. 

Just because you’re well-known doesn’t mean you’re a good mascot. Here’s looking at you, Phillie Phanatic. Apparently, he hails from the Galapagos Islands. He should have stayed there. 

Did the professional sports officials in Philadelphia conspire to create the worst mascot in all sports across the world? If so, they did a fantastic job. Gritty might not be worse than Phillie Phanatic, but he is just as bad. 

Slugs are disgusting. There was no good reason to turn one into a mascot. Yet the University of California Santa Cruz did just that. And now we’re all saddled with the misfortune of looking at Sammy the Banana Slug. 

There were so many ways the Orlando Magic could’ve gone with their mascot. Unlimited potential. And they chose Stuff the Magic Dragon, a pun on a popular children’s song? Who got the final say in that decision? We’d like to have a word. 

Pierre the Pelican is a good mascot. He’s moderately intimidating and clearly associated with the team name. King Cake Baby, however, is frightening. His origins are in a Mardi Gras tradition, so we see the vision, but the execution was terrible.

Nothing about Speedy the Geoduck makes sense. Nothing. He is alarming to look at and all sorts of odd. In Evergreen State’s defense, they pride themselves on the bizarreness. At least they’re self-aware.  

See, the thing about choosing a local export for your team mascot is that you don’t actually educate people about your location. You just confuse them. Confusion is all Sammy the Shrimp of Southend United has created. 

Cayenne of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette is another example of why food shouldn't be made into mascots. Sure, it's a more menacing food than some, but it's still not a good choice. 

Apparently, having a terrible mascot isn’t exclusive to sports teams in the West. The Chiba Lotte Mariners, a baseball team out of Japan, have Mysterious Fish as their mascot. And it sounds like they might be just as confused by their mascot as the rest of us are. 

What we will say about the Fighting Pickle is that there’s an interesting story behind it becoming the University of North Carolina School of the Arts mascot, but it’s still bad. The good news is that it doesn’t make it to the national stage too often, so we can forget about it and move on. 

Scottsdale Community College's staff and students used to be embarrassed by Artie the Artichoke. Although they have since embraced him, they should’ve remained embarrassed.