What do the University of Georgia, University of Texas and LSU have in common? They all have live mascots: Georgia has Uga the Bulldog, Texas has Bevo the Longhorn and LSU has Mike the Tiger. Now, I know what you’re thinking: Why can’t Kirkwood have a real Sammy the Eagle?
Admittedly, we do run into a problem pretty quickly with the whole live mascot idea. What in the world is Sammy? We know he is an eagle, but what type? Is he a golden eagle? Probably not due to his distinctly white head.
Well, could he be a bald eagle? Unfortunately, that’s a miss, also due to his spikey hair thing going on. My personal guess is that he is a white-tailed eagle that ran out of paint while auditioning to be the next member of the Blue Man Group.
Once we find our live Sammy, we do run into another issue: We would need somewhere to house it. That would probably mean creating a habitat for it or hiring a falconer. In fairness to the college, this does seem quite expensive and potentially impractical.
I believe a live mascot could help Kirkwood with its recruitment. I personally would have been even more likely to go to Kirkwood if we had a live eagle at our baseball games. It would certainly make the pre-game activities more fun if we could get a bird to fly around and intimidate the opposing team with its aerial acrobatics and attack dives.
Bevo, the live mascot for Texas, has over 110k followers on his Instagram account. If Kirkwood had this level of engagement on its Instagram page, we could expect a huge jump in the number of students applying to get into Kirkwood.
Once we figure out what species Sammy is and solve the housing issue, I really think this idea could take off.
Categories: Editorials, Opinion
