My Father, My Mascot: The Surprisingly Frequent Phenomenon of Sports Mascots with Families, Vol. 1

With Father’s Day this coming Sunday, old pal/reader and contributor Kary Klismet returns once again with a very special article I’m pretty sure has never been covered on Uni Watch: sports mascots and their families! I mean, you didn’t think Mr. & Mrs. Met were DINKs*, did you? Of course not.

So please, sit back and enjoy yet another fantastic piece from Kary!

*DINK=Double Income, No Kids

• • • • •My Father, My Mascot: The Surprisingly Frequent Phenomenon of Sports Mascots with Families, Vol. 1
by Kary Klismet

Greetings, fellow Uni Watchers! We’re coming up on one of my favorite holidays on the uni calendar – Father’s Day. What makes it such a special occasion, you ask? Well, for the better part of the last dozen years or more, it was the day that Phil furthered one of the great traditions of this website when he shared readers’ photos of – and tributes to – their fathers and grandfathers in uniform.

Now that Phil has taken his talents to the weekdays, I’ll be eager to see how new Weekend Editor Jim Vilk puts his personal spin on the custom. He has some big shoes to fill, of course, but I’m more than confident he’ll do the holiday justice!

As we prepare to celebrate the institution of fatherhood this weekend, many of you may not be aware that another holiday of particular significance in the uni-verse is not far behind: National Mascot Day on June 17th! Not sure how to, ahem, “dress for the season?” No worries! Here’s a store that has you covered! You might need to ask for expedited delivery at this point, though.

With these two important holidays being so close to one another, it seemed only fitting to explore their juxtaposition through a phenomenon that’s more common than you might realize: mascots who have “children!” Yep, there’s a decent chance that the lovable fluffball who gets you fired up to root for your favorite team has a costumed mini-me lingering around somewhere. If you find this revelation as fascinating as I do (or even if you don’t but are willing to humor me), come along as we launch what I anticipate might be a recurring series over the next few years called, “My Father, My Mascot.”

When talking about fathers and family, I can’t think of a better way to start off than to go back to one’s roots. For me, that means taking a trip down memory lane to my formative years growing up and going to college in Iowa. The Corn State doesn’t have any major league teams, but their rich history in college athletics has proven to be fertile ground for finding fathers in fake fur.

Let’s kick things off by sharing a couple of photos of the University of Iowa’s mascot, Herky the Hawk, with his son back in 1981.

That little Herky Jr. is definitely a chip off the old block! He may even have one up on his dad with his excellent striped sock game.

And I can’t be sure, but I think this might be a photo of Herky Sr. as a young chick with his own dad (“Grandpa Herky”?) many years prior.

If that is Grandpa Herky, you gotta admit, he’s aged gracefully!

And could this old-timer:

…be Great Grandpa Herky?!

It’s interesting to see how, now that he’s all grown up, the current torchbearer for the Herky family heritage has ditched the helmet tradition of his forefathers.

To be fair, though, he and his kin have been known to go helmet-less at basketball games and other sporting events for decades now. And frankly, when his current helmet option looks like this:

…it’s not hard to see why sometimes less is more.

If you travel 90 miles northwest on Interstate 380 from Herky’s home in Iowa City, you’ll find yourself in Cedar Falls, home of the University of Northern Iowa. Also known as UNI, it’s long been a favorite of the Uni Watch crowd (for obvious reasons). And with a mascot familial history every bit as complex as their collegiate counterparts downstate, the Panthers deserve a turn in the holiday spotlight.

UNI is represented at sporting events by T.C. (short for “The Cat”) and his sister, T.K. (aka “The Kitten”).

T.K. is a relative newcomer to the scene compared to her brother, having debuted in 2010, while T.C. has been around since the mid-1980s. But Northern Iowa’s tradition of Panther mascots dates back to the 1930s, so they must have a dad out there who prowled the sidelines before them, right?

Turns out, following these furry felines’ family tree is fraught with fuzzy photographs of fishy-looking forebears. Thankfully, however, we have positive proof of paternity based on these classic photos of father and child at what must have been some of T.C.’s earliest appearances before growing up to take on the mascot role full-time:

Now if only we could figure out how some of those other characters fit into the Panther genealogy! It appears that none other than the Pink Panther himself might fill the role of the drunken uncle. Meanwhile, a few of the distant relations look like they’re from the cougar or wildcat sides of the family. And is that a weasel in T.C.’s lineage? Because I don’t care what anyone calls it, there’s no way that’s a Panther!

I guess with that chaotic collection of cats in his clan, it should come as no surprise that T.C. has not been particularly precise about properly pairing the purples in his Panthers uniforms. What’s that, you say? It’s not relevant to this story about mascots and fathers? Point taken, but old habits die hard.

If you think sorting out the genealogy of Herky and T.C. is thorny, Iowa State University’s Cy the Cardinal says “hold my beer!” Why a team called the Cyclones has a bird as a mascot:

…is confusing enough. And given the varying visages of ISU’s mascots over the years, one might be forgiven for concluding that all these ornery ornithes are orphans. But a closer look at Cy’s pedigree firms up the feeling that there’s a father to this flock.

Here’s what we know for sure: the original Cy – we’ll call him “Cy Sr.” – burst on the scene (or hatched, you might say) in 1954. Despite his awkward, vaguely rooster-like appearance – or perhaps because of it – he had a confident strut that tagged him as a big mascot on campus.

It should come as little surprise, then, that “Baby Cy” had arrived by 1978.

This youngster (“Cy Jr.,” if you will) entertained Iowa State crowds alongside his father through the mid-‘80s, when he abruptly disappeared. In 1989, a new, larger mascot – “Clone” – took Cy Jr.’s place as the youthful counterpart to Cy Sr.

Unlike Cy Jr., who looked almost like a perfectly miniaturized version of the original Cy, Clone was hardly a clone of his father. With a nimbler, more athletic physique, Clone could perform antics on the sidelines that the older, stiffer Cy Sr. was simply incapable of.

I initially suspected that Clone was actually a teenaged Baby Cy, still a bit gangly on the backside of puberty, who’d adopted an alias. The fact that Clone’s look changed slightly after he’d been around the program for a couple of years:

…seemed like confirmation of my theory that he was just in the process of physically maturing.

Heck, I continued to believe this after the elder Cy gave way to a new, even more buff mascot after a program rebrand in 1995. The body was similar to Clone’s, but the face bore a closer resemblance to Cy Sr. I figured this must have been Clone, now fully grown out of his adolescent phase. Unfortunately, my theory didn’t hold up to the photographic evidence, as this family reunion portrait from the mid- to late ‘90s demonstrates.

So does that mean that the new Cy is actually Baby Cy, having officially taken the mantle from his father after several years out of the limelight, bulking up with a regular gym routine and protein shakes? It seems like there’s no mistaking his bloodlines based on appearances at least.

But what happened to Cy Sr. and Clone? Could the elder statesbird of the family have needed a caretaker at the old mascots’ home and taken Cy Jr.’s brother with him for help in his retirement? Or did Clone set off to seek his fortune as a mascot for another team? Or maybe he finally did grow into his looks and settled down to start a family of his own.

We may never know all the answers to those mascot mysteries, but it’s always heartwarming to see mascot fathers and sons together in photos like the ones highlighted above. In fact, if you know of any mascot families or father-child combinations, please be sure to mention them in the comments below! I have a few ideas squirreled away for the future (including some that just might involve squirrels), but I’d also love to hear some of your favorites! And whatever you’re commemorating in the next few days – whether it’s Father’s Day, National Mascot Day, or, like these convivial costumed characters, both! – may your celebrations be joyful and memorable!

• • • • •

Thanks, Kary! Yet another wonderful deep dive and a great way to kick off Father’s Day!

OK readers — got any mascot families or father-child combos? Let us know in the comments below.