5 College Football Mascots That Best Embody the Sport

The distinct traditions and personalities of the nation’s hundreds of college football programs play an outsized role in the popularity of the sport. There is no better example of that fact than the sport’s wide array of mascots.

Sure, there are many Tigers and Eagles and other relatively standard mascots. There are also giant red blobs, leprechauns, oranges, rocketeers and rifle-toting mountaineers. The sport also features beloved live mascots — dogs, goats, birds of prey and a live tiger who used be driven around the field.

There are many attributes that make a mascot great — athleticism, humor, creativity and even a little mischief. When it comes to college football, these five mascots evoke what makes the sport great.

5. Brutus Buckeye — Ohio State

Brutus Buckeye, a true college football icon, is set to celebrate his 60th birthday in 2025. The anthropomorphic nut went through a number of design changes in his early years, from an original student-created papier-mâché design in 1965 to a fiberglass version just months later. Ohio State moved to a version more closely resembling the modern Brutus in 1980, with a nut head on a human body.

Brutus is one of the more athletic mascots in college sports, known for performing backflips and headstands in addition to doing pushups for every point scored by the Buckeyes.

Of course, those as popular as Brutus naturally will make some enemies along the way. In an unforgettable example of mascot-on-mascot violence, Brutus was tackled by Ohio University’s Rufus the Bobcat during a 2010 game. The two teams have not played since. Did Brutus have something to do with it? Only he can say for certain, and of course, he doesn’t talk.

4. Cosmo the Cougar — BYU

When it comes to high-flying mascots, it is hard to top BYU’s Cosmo — literally. The mascot has flown through flaming hoops at football games. He’s been launched for a dunk from beyond the 3-point line at BYU basketball games. He’s even gone skydiving.

On top of it, he performs with the school’s championship-winning dance team and is known to both break dance and display some incredible gymnastics moves during games. Being a Cosmo requires an outrageous level of athleticism.

Stephan Millard, a former junior Olympian gymnast who performed as Cosmo until his 2020 graduation, described just how intense tryouts for the role are.

“The first hour is physical testing,” he told KSL Sports in 2020 . “You max out on everything; max push-ups, max pull-ups, max everything to make you super tired, and to test your endurance. The next two hours we were break dancing, dancing, testing our ability to flip and hit the trampolines. Our endurance was tested because as Cosmo, wearing the mask and the suit, it’s extremely hot. It’s difficult to breathe and it’s difficult to see. So the testing really simulates the experience of being Cosmo.”

If there was any doubt BYU fans are passionate about Cosmo, it came to an end in 2020, when they flooded the ballot box to notch the mascot a win in SiriusXM’s Mascot Bracket Championship, beating out more than 60 of the country’s top college mascots.

3. Ralphie the Buffalo — Colorado

There may be no better entrance in college football than Ralphie’s run.

Although the school began its live mascot tradition in 1957, the first Ralphie made her debut in ’66, running onto the field ahead of an October win over Kansas State. She returned for the season opener against Baylor the following year, cementing her place as one of the great gameday traditions in the entire sport.

The current Ralphie is the sixth North American bison to fill the role (while the two animals are closely related, buffaloes are only native to Africa and Asia). Her predecessor, Ralphie V, retired following the 2019 season.

Ralphie’s handlers, a group of more than a dozen Colorado students, spend about 20 hours per week training and caring for the mascot, per the Post Independent .

Because of the skill and athleticism required to be a Ralphie handler, as well as the rigorous schedule, they are considered varsity athletes by the school. The handlers rotate duties for the Ralphie Run at Folsom Field each week.

2. Stanford Tree

No mascot is a more apt representative for the chaos that is college football than the Stanford Tree.

The prestigious California school has not had an official mascot since 1972, when the school retired its “Indians” nickname, and with it, mascot Prince Lightfoot. Three years later, Stanford’s famous Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band (LSJUMB) tried out a series of new mascots, with the Tree ultimately becoming popular enough to become a mainstay for the band. It remains a band tradition, and not an official school mascot, to this day.

The Tree’s evolving, homemade look is an indelible part of its charm. Each year, the Tree designs its own costume, leading to a wide array of mouths, eyes, leaf types and accessories. Stanford trees have donned monocles, various hats, signs and all manner of other colorful details. The 2014 version of the mascot was a palm tree with a giant tongue, a significant departure from the typical evergreens.

The Tree has a history of mischief over the decades, including run-ins with students, band members and rival mascot Oski from Cal.

In 2022, the Tree was suspended for criticizing the school, holding a banner that read “Stanford hates fun.” Suspensions have been relatively common for the mascot, with the most infamous example coming in 2006 when the student playing the Tree was drunk at a basketball game, with her blood alcohol level measuring at 0.157, nearly twice the legal limit for driving.

It is certainly not for everyone, but in college football, the Stanford Tree is a true one-of-one.

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1. The Oregon Duck

Oregon used to have a live duck named Puddles that attended sporting events, and it began to be depicted as the famous Disney cartoon Donald Duck in campus papers. In 1947, athletic director Leo Harris reached a handshake deal with Walt Disney that allowed the school to use Donald’s likeness for its mascot. The agreement was formalized in 1973, and the Disney-inspired design won a fan vote over a tougher-looking, teethed “Mallard Drake” designed by a student cartoonist by a two-to-one margin.

The Duck, which is still often referred to as “Puddles,” enters every game on the back of a custom Harley-Davidson motorcycle, leading the team through the tunnel onto the field at Autzen Stadium. Like some other mascots, the Duck does push-ups for each point scored by Oregon. Unlike many teams, however, that number builds on itself, so for an 81-7 win over Portland State in 2023, the Duck wound up doing 546 total push-ups.

The Duck became the first mascot to serve as “College GameDay” guest picker on ESPN ahead of a 2014 game against Michigan State. A confusing pick on paper, as the mascot doesn’t talk, the Duck put together a wonderful prop-filled performance alongside broadcasting great Lee Corso.

There are some great mascots in college football, but few could carry one of the most famous segments in all of sports this way.

The Duck has walked the entire Rose Bowl parade in costume. He’s gone full WWE heel during a brawl with Houston Cougars mascot Shasta (and later appeared in an actual WWE ring ). He survived being lit on fire by a fan during a game . He sloppily pounded Tostitos in a lawn chair during the Fiesta Bowl.

The Duck is unmatched when it comes to comedy bits, and he’s had too many viral moments to count. Plus, he can do 500-plus push-ups when the Oregon offense runs up the score in early September. As far as mascots go, he’s a five-tool player.

Honorable mention

Any discussion of college football mascots is incomplete without a nod to the very good dogs of the sport, including Boise State’s Blitz, Georgia’s Uga, Tennessee’s Smokey and Texas A&M’s Reveille.

In the costumed mascot category, Syracuse’s Otto the Orange, Miami’s Sebastian the Ibis and Western Kentucky’s Big Red narrowly missed our list.

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