PRPG:
Fake or Fact

Fake-or-Fact Friday: Mascots Gone Wild

October 23, 2015

Two of the following news stories about sports mascots are true. But one of them…lacks spirit, by which we mean we made it up. Can you guess which one is the fake? The answer is at the end of the post.

A.

In September, Arizona State hosted the University of New Mexico. That night at Sun Devil Stadium was also City of Tempe night, in which the team honored local city employees. In attendance was a city council who had almost completely recovered from a July back surgery. But then he went down onto the field to pose for a picture and the team’s devil mascot, Sparky, snuck up behind him and jumped on his back. The councilman wound up back in the hospital, out of work, and using a walker. Doctors added six weeks to his recovery time.

B.

The University of Oregon Duck is one of the most visible mascots in college football. Last summer it even appeared in a series of ads for ESPN. But it’s not all glorious. In a pep rally like event prior to the beginning of the 2015 College Football season, the Oregon Duck led a rubber duck race in the Millrace, a river just off the University of Oregon campus in Eugene, Oregon. As more than 1,000 rubber ducks bobbed into the river, the Duck tried to work the crowd into such a frenzy that it fell off of the bridge where it was standing, and right into a muddy bank of the Millrace. It took emergency workers more than an hour to dislodge the student in a duck costume.

C.

A man got very drunk at an event at BB&T Ballpark in Charlotte and woke up in the bowels of the stadium. Looking for an exit, he wandered into the dressing room of Homer the Dragon, the mascot of the local AAA baseball team Charlotte Knights. So, the man put the costume on, found a way out of the stadium, and spent five hours wandering around Charlotte inside the dragon costume, getting free drinks at multiple bars. The team finally noticed the costume was missing, and the man was easily tracked down and charged two breaking-and-entering and larceny.

 


Want more fakes? Check out Uncle John’s Fake Facts. (Really!)