The tiger stands defender*

Magnet #554 - Princeton Tigers

There was a time I knew the mascot of every single NCAA men's basketball team between the ACC, Big East, Pac-10, SEC, Big 10, and the Big Eight. Yes, it was that long ago.

Seriously. A boy's dream girlfriend - I could list inane stats of the top 10 Div I ballers. After all, it's only expected of a Carolina Girl.

Well, not really. Really, it was because I had the best summer internship - ever. Editorial intern at the publishing house that put out the college basketball previews for most of the conferences listed above. Had to read behind everyone as a last check - on the stories, the players, the stats.

So. Much. Fun. And, they also put out those fabulous commemorative hardcovers for the NCAA basketball champions every year, and they had this terrific library - read, skids of boxes - of past books.

I managed to score the Carolina '93 book, as well as the Carolina '82 book. And of course, I gave them both away to the wrong boy. Man, those would be collectors' items now. Sigh.

Anyway. My friend went out to Princeton for an event, and picked up this Princeton Tiger for me. Supercute! Whiiiiiich is probably not what they were going for in terms of fighting tigers. He looks like he could kill me with his little smirky smirk going on there. Hah.

Actually, years ago, UNC redesigned their mascot, for almost the same reason. The old ram was too lovable looking and meek. And so they changed him to be all mean and unhappy, and quite frankly, scary.

I picked this guy for today because a couple of nights ago, I was talking with some friends about the mascots they had over the years. Interestingly, my sampling of a dozen people yielded several Eagles and Mustangs, Cardinals and Bulldogs. Some of the odder ones were the Wallabies, the Maroons, the Blue and the Aztecs.

Though, my all-time favorite? The Hot Rods. Yeah. Good thing that was an elementary school. Any older and we'd be making jokes all the way through the last buzzer!

*From one of the Tiger fight songs. What? I just got done saying I'm a Carolina Girl, I'm not going around spouting off other people's fight songs!