THE NOWHERE-NEAR COMPLETE GUIDE TO ADVERTISING MASCOT SUPERHEROES : PLAY BALL! (Part 2)

Sports mascots continue to be a bizarre conglomeration of superheroes and animals. I'll focus on the superheroes, someone else can do the animals. When we come across a superhero who is also an animal, we'll fight over it.

Crunchman (Syracuse Crunch)
This lumpy, ill-fitting superhero was apparently at the center of some body-shaming controvery, having received a facelift and tummy tuck between seasons. The fact is that, yes, he is a very awkward-looking superhero, with molded muscles and even topographic dimples which leaves the whole affair seeming like a three-dimensional map of the uncanny valley itself. I'm not saying I wouldn't fuck 'im, I'm just saying I wouldn't want to.

Probably the weirdest thing about the dude is that he's wearing navy blue cargo shorts. First off, I wasn't aware that you could get cargo shorts in navy blue. Secondly, I wasn't aware that Kevin Smith was a sports mascot awwwww no Kevin Smith is getting to be all right, he's fine.

God, his crotch is unsettling.

Golden Hurricane (University of Tulsa)
Speaking of ill-fitting bodyshapes, here's Golden Hurricane, another controversial mascot usurping a popular predecessor. The previous Golden Hurricane was apparently a ... hurricane. I'll save him for the Nowhere-Near Complete Guide to Advertising Mascot Natural Disasters, along with Hasbro's Tsunami TSimon, McDonald's Flesh-Eating-Virus-burglar, and the United States Government Foreign Policy.

And, yeah, he's mostly blue rather than golden. I see it, too.

SIEG HEIL! 

Venom (Rio Grande Valley Vipers)
Okay. Let me see if I can explain this one in a coherent fashion.

The original mascot of the Rio Grande Valley Vipers is Viper, predictably enough. Viper's gimmick is to do the usual amount of mascot fuffing around, but also he frequently injects attendees at the games with poison. I ... I don't know if it is real poison. I hope not but, like I say, America is changing. This might count as healthcare, five or six repeal-and-replaces from now.

What venom does it run around and cure people who have been injected with poison by Viper. See, I told you! Modern-day health care! It's the single-viper model, which is gaining a lot of traction among the millennials...