When we last left off, our hero Kenneth had listed the worst "half " of the NFL mascots, from the made-up Discount Double-Chuck to the sad story of Roary. It's not easy to make lists and rankings because of how offended the majority of Americans are when you put something at 17 when it clearly should have been ranked at 16, but it's a dirty job that somebody has to do.
I'm not being told by Danny Kelly that it's actually not something that somebody has to do. That the world would have gone on living without a ranking of NFL mascots, but clearly DK is just messing with me. Good one, Danny.
We move on and finish the list with the Top 15 Mascots in the NFL, starting with...
#15 - Staley Da Bear
Named after the original team name, the Decatur Staleys as well as founder A.E. Staley, Da Bear was introduced as the team mascot in 2003. He could have fallen into the same category as "Lazy-Ass Mascot Designs" but there's something slightly different about Staley.
Look at the way that he's active in the community, helps kids, but also sort of has this look on his face like, "Yeah, I'll eat children. I'm a damn bear, you know."
What exactly are you doing in that picture, Staley?
Staley's profile on the Bears website gives some Staley facts:
Age: Bearly Old Enough (What the hell is that supposed to mean? Bearly Legal?)
Weight: 340 LBS (Well, a male black bear weighs about 250 pounds, so Staley is like the Duece Lutui of bears, if he is a black bear.)
Favorite Baseball Team: Cubs... Hello, he's a Bear! (If they dressed him in white socks, this might not alienate half of Bears fans?)
About Staley: .... nickname is Dancing Bear... (Hey, I've been to that site! (Do NOT go to that site at work))
I admit that there's something about Staley that I kind of like. He's soft but he still looks like he wants to grab a hold of your scalp and tear it straight off of the skull and put you on an episode of I Survived...
But the Bears are the Bears and with each passing year that the Seahawks play in Chicago, I grow to hate them more and more.
#14 - Jaxson De Ville, "You know who else wore a lot of flair? The Nazis."
Not to be confused with our very own Jaxson De Bevens, the Jags mascot sure has a whole lot of sh-t going on:
Some mascots remind me of putting everything you want to in a pizza. You can't just put it in the pizza if it doesn't belong on a pizza!
#10-13 - Four Mascots That I Fear Will Murder Me In My Sleep
T.D. is the mascot for Miami. Do you know what T.D. stands for? It just stands for touchdown, something that the Dolphins aren't very familiar with but they'll always have one TD. But this T.D. could stand for "Terrifying Dreams." Dolphins should never be standing. Ever.
K.C. Wolf - Hero or finally taking advantage of a chance to eat a fan?
Miles - Oh great, evil horses can fly now.
And finally, this is the Titans mascot T-Rac with the old man from Poltergeist 2
#8-9. Let's just steal our idea for a mascot!
And Close Enough to That, #7 - Toro
#6 - Sir Purr, the NFL's LOLCAT
The Top 5: Ladies and Gentleman, These Mascots Are For the Birds!
Birds are some of the most amazing creatures on the planet. I mean, they can fly. FLY! Flying is the one of the most sought after traits by humans, and I don't mean flying in a metal tube. I mean that most of us want to sprout wings like Archangel. Even if that does seem really painful.
There are nearly 10,000 bird species and at any given time there are between one and two billion birds over 100 billion (I can't count) alive on the planet. (That's quite the turnover.) Birds are the only creatures on the planet that have feathers, they fly thousands of miles every year, and some birds actually talk. They TALK. Have FEATHERS. And they FLY. Birds are like the most ridiculous dream you've ever had.
The earliest known birds lived 150 million years ago during the Jurassic Period. Archaeopteryx lithographica was thought to be sort of part bird/part reptile, one of the most bad-ass creatures you could ever imagine:
It's like something out of a Game of Thrones novel (I assume, I only watch the show because I don't learn good) except that it was real! Probably! Did birds come from Dinosaurs? Did raptors turn into redtails? Is this a boy or a girl?
Sometimes I can forget the difference between a tortoise and a turtle, an alligator and a crocodile, or a black bear and a grizzly bear. But one thing is for sure, you would never confuse a chicken with a parrot. You wouldn't think that an ostrich (the world's largest bird!) is the same as a peacock. Birds are unique, interesting, and amazing animals.
For that reason, many schools and professional sports teams have chosen different birds to be their mascot. There are five such mascots in the NFL and they've all made the top five, four of which are in the NFC. Here are the top five NFL mascots:
#5. Big Red
Big Red was "hatched" by the Cardinals in 1998. That season, the Cardinals made the playoffs for the first time in 16 years. It would, of course, be another 11 years until Arizona had a winning record again.
His favorite movie is The Birds and his favorite song is Bird is the Word. Now I'm starting to wonder if every one of these mascots will have the same profile copied and pasted. His favorite website is azcardinals.com... Hey, ever hear of Google or YouTube or SBNation!? (azcardinals.com, like almost all official team websites, is lame.)
But you are a bird and indeed bird is the word, so you've made the top five. But as a division-rival with terrible taste in websites, you're the last of the birds.
#4 - Poe
As a big fan of Edgar Allen, I wanted to put Poe higher on this list but I just can't help the fact that A.) It's sort of a lazy costume (the anti-Jaxson) and B.) He sort of looks like one of those racist crows.
Poe also cites his favorite TV show as "That's So Raven!" Oh, dear.
His favorite song? I Believe I Can Fly.
His favorite school subjects? Recess and lunch.
While I might agree with his favorite school subjects, I thought NFL mascots were supposed to be good role models for kids. And yet his favorite TV show is awful, his favorite school subject isn't a subject and his favorite song is sung by a guy that pees on young people.
Poe-thetic?
#3 - Swoop
There are many "Swoop" mascots in the U.S, including the avian mascot of Eastern Washington University. All of them are birds. Is Swoop just some whore mascot that will put on any jersey for a few bucks and root the team on?
Very little is known about Swoop and the Eagles don't say much about him on their website. I have placed him at number three on the list because I have.
In that picture it looks like he's saying "Hey, F--- You!" so I guess you could at least say that he represents Philadelphia properly.
#2 - Freddie Falcon
Freddie Falcon was the first mascot in the city of Atlanta, having been hatched 35 years ago. However, he's not even the first Freddie Falcon. That would be the mascot of Bowling Green, also named Freddie Falcon but born in 1950. And that Freddie Falcon has a wife: Frieda Falcon.
This Freddie Falcon has an attitude of like, "Whateva!" as you can see in the picture above. However, the Falcons have never won a Super Bowl and have made just one appearance. As is common knowledge, "Bird Teams" haven't been very successful, with only the 2000 Ravens winning a Super Bowl.
Freddie might be single and unsuccessful but I have almost no opinion of the Atlanta Falcons and he is a bird so I have placed him at number two. I am really just leading up to the greatest mascot in the NFL... this guy.
#1 - BLITZ!!!
Blitz also joined the NFL in 1998 (What's the deal with 1998 and Bird mascots?) one year before Mike Holmgren. Seattle would go on their most successful run in franchise history over the next ten years and almost all of it can be attributed to Blitz and the 12th Man and almost none of it to Holmgren, Matt Hasselbeck, Walter Jones and Shaun Alexander.
Unlike Poe, Blitz's hobbies are good for kids: Reading, Fitness, and Birdwatching. I sort of attribute "Birdwatching" to "Blitz likes to check out "chicks" and invite them to the gun show." Blitz has enough mass to have been cast in the original Predator alongside Carl Weathers but also a dope-ass beak and a seriously slick blue head of hair.
According to Wikipedia, Blitz had "a dramatic facelift in 2004, in an effort to make him appear less menacing to children" whereas other mascots like Staley and T.D. don't give a crap if they scare the living sh-t out of kids, Blitz is family-friendly as well as being devilishly handsome.
Underneath the outfit is Ryan Asdourian, a hardware marketing lead at Microsoft.
Asdourian suffers from Multiple Sclerosis and spends hundreds of hours raising awareness about the disease.
So Blitz is: Handsome, strong, and charming on the outside, and smart, brave, and charitable on the inside.
Is there really any question as to who the NFL's best mascot is, even if this is a Seahawks blog and why the hell would you think I'd put someone else up here like Sir Purr or K.C. Wolf? You should have seen this coming!
Blitz has set the bar for mascots in the same way that Ryan Gosling has set the bar for men. Blitz: he's flying head and tails above the competition.
Seriously: This was all in good fun. Mascots in the NFL represent the goodness of the league and they all put in a tireless amount of effort to do good in the community while also cheering on their favorite teams. I like to think of myself as a die-hard Seahawks fan that would remove body parts to see them succeed, but I'd probably never dedicate that much of my free-time to being a mascot because it's a whole lot of work, even if I did have the physical capabilities to do so which I don't. You have to admire all of these guys and I'm sorry that I'm getting serious about it, but while the NFL might have a few bad apples in players and coaches, it would be hard to imagine that they have a single bad apple in the mascot department. All of the men under the suits should be proud of their accomplishments and we thank you.
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