Sparty Was Robbed

I'm falling asleep on the job. As you know, I like to be your source for mascot news. It's right up there in the subtitle, even before geography. But somewhere i have never travelled has beaten me to the story of the 2006 inductees to the Mascot Hall of Fame.

Let's start, of course, with the glorious realization that this Hall of Fame exists. Some friends of mine have made small noises recently about moving to Philadelphia. It appears the Mascot shrine is located there. I might have to start apartment hunting.

The Hall's web site says that the institution "is in its infant stages and needs your help to grow. Do your part and receive some cool gifts along with voting rights in the induction process." (Emphasis mine.)

Huh? I can vote?? Little ol' me, entrusted with such a weighty duty? I could emerge from a Philadelphia voting booth and piously raise my ink-smeared finger to allow a New York Times photographer to capture the miracle that is democracy? Rest assured, I'm investigating this possibility.

Perhaps if I lend my voice to the chorus, I can rectify miscarriages of justice like the one described on somewhere i have never travelled, in which the University of Delaware's YoUDee -- a "fightin' chicken" -- was voted in over Michigan State's Sparty. The nomination process includes submitting a three-minute video of the mascot in action. Here is Sparty's reel. These moments pass pretty quickly, but I particularly like the 1:12 mark, where he crowds out a couple of students on the top step of an academic building, and 1:28, where he, perhaps unadvisedly, seems to be manning a phone at a suicide hotline center.