I’ve mentioned this before, but the Compton, CA High teams are named “Tarbabes”.
Comeing from a town with a very significant black population, I couldn’t believe it. With some serious googleing, I found that it’s supposed to be the feeder school to the local community college, whose mascot is the “Tartars”. How exactly they then landed on “Tarbabes” is beyond me. I do think, though, that it might have been chosen while it was still a predominately white neighborhood.
Of course, even if it’s a white neighborhood, it’s still a racist and derogatory term.
And the BEST team nickname, on the other hand, was the predominantly Native American school in Colorado (Greeley, I think) that called it’s team the Fighting Whities.
It is supposed to be stupid. The whole idea behind the Stanford Band adopting a tree as a mascot was their way of coming up with an anti-mascot. If you have ever had the privelage of seeing one of their halftime shows in person, you would understand. They are everything the typical marching band is not.
A couple of their best stints I got to witness were the ones that got them banned from a few venues.
-Back in the early 90’s, they did a skit poking fun of the potato famine at halftime in South Bend. Hillarious, but they are no longer welcome there.
-In the late 80’s, they poked fun of the spotted owl/lumberjack debate in Oregon by forming a chainsaw on half of the field and an owl on the other half. The chainsaw fired up and the cheerleaders holding up the large circles flipped them over to reveal the “X” marks on the owls eyes. Again, I thought it was funny, but Oregonians did not. Again, banned.
Probably their most controversial act about STD’s at the Halftime of the Blockbuster Bowl in '93 depicted a condom being slipped on over an erect penis, but no one seemed to get offended by this. I guess Floridians are more forgiving than Irish and Duck fans.
I got you all beat.
The Lansing Lugnuts
We finally got minor league baseball. Yea! The mayor formed a commission to solicit ideas and choose a name for the team. After the team was announced the mayor was quoted as saying something like, “We wanted to choose something that people would think was just too stupid to be true. We think this will really make our merchendise something that will sell all over the country. People will have to have a Lugnuts hat or shirt just because no one will believe it.”
After being told that “lugnut” was a derogitory term the equivelant of “moron” and had been for the best part of the century the mayor expressed disbelief and said no one ever mentioned that fact in all of their considerations. But the name by then was set in stone.
And the mascot? There are two actually there is the logo which is a lug bolt with a goofy face on it. and the “Big Lug” which is a dinosaur with nuts for nostrils.
So the team was named by choosing the stupidest submission in a contest in the belief that it would sell hats. And it was also an inadvertant synonym for “moron”
You other teams better lookout. The morons are coming, the morons are coming!!
I went to St. Lawrence Central HS and our team name was…
The Larries. :smack:
Wha???
Obviously, we had no mascot. What were we going to do? Have some guy named Larry run around the basketball court or football field? Perhaps a Larry from Three’s Company lookalike?
When we were doing the yearbook, we asked someone on staff–“What the hell is a Larry?” Their answer was that it’s some sort of bird. A quick google search turned up nothing (although I’m not a very good googler).
I’m a little skeptical about that answer since Larry is short for Lawrence, which is where they obviously got the name Larry. I think they said it’s a bird just so we didn’t look so stupid. Alas, we had our football team for that!
It could’ve been worse. They could’ve been called the Squatters.
I’ve never understood Iowa States’ mascot. Cy the Cyclone, which is a cardinal?
It might be a racist or derogatory term if you are from Tartaria.
“Compton College’s mascot name is the Tartars, named after the Turkic Tatars, so the mascot name for Compton High School became the Tartar Babies. The mascot itself is “Baby Tartar,” who wears a diaper and carries a big sword.” — Wikipedia.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Compton_High_Tarbabe.jpg
I was going to ask “What do you mean - What’s the stupidest sports mascot you’ve ever heard? - Mascots don’t talk!”
Then I saw the thread was started in 2003. Montreal still had a MLB team, then.
It would have been so cool if it was an albatross.
My contribution is the Delta State Fighting Okra. they will slime you.
the SDMB Zombies, welcome aboard Katsumi.
Acknowledging that it’s a zombie…
Given that our motto (possibly unofficial) was “Omnia extares”–“Let it all hang out”–it should be understood that everything you just said is deliberate. Greeners don’t take their sports very seriously.
I might have a contender to win this decade-long contest, although I can’t dig up a cite. My information is a few years out of date (based on when my wife’s coworker’s son was at the school).
Anyway, there’s a local high school whose sports team is called the warhorses. That’s not the dumb one, that’s a pretty good one.
Except that’s what the boys’ team is called. The girls have to be the fillies. Putting aside the idiotic implication that warhorses are all male, that’s still not the dumb one.
The school has a pretty high population of mentally handicapped students. These students compete in various events as the sawhorses.
That’s the bad one.
Ohio State’s mascot with the buckeye head and the striped shirt just might be the lamest mascot I’ve ever seen.
Thank you. It is nice to be here.
It is not the Ham-fighters. It is the Fighters.
北海道日本ハムファイターズ / Hokkaido Nippon-Hamu Faitazu / Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters.
In my country it is common for sports teams to be corporate-sponsored. Nippon Ham is a meatpacking company in Hokkaido prefecture. In this aspect, the Fighters are similar to The Green Bay Packers, originally the Indian Packing Company Indians and subsequently the Acme Packing Company Packers.
The Tokyo Gas Creators (a gridiron football team sponsored by Tokyo Gas Group) cheerleaders are the “Cre-Cheers” (creatures).
Snead State Parsons (Boaz, AL)
That crab came back for a retro night and attacked the A’s mascot a few years ago.
No love for the Rhode Island’s School of Design’s Mascot Scrotie the Scrotum ?
The school’s basketball team is known as the Balls, and their slogan is, “When the heat is on, the Balls stick together.” The hockey team is called the Nads, and their cheer is “Go Nads!” The cheerleaders for the Nads are commonly known as the “Jockstraps” (since they support the Nads). The yearly hockey game with rival college Cooper Union is known as the “Supportive Cup.”
Poca High School in Poca, West Virginia is the Poca Dots.
Benson High School in Omaha is the Bunnies.
Arkansas Tech University is the Wonderboys.
Yuma, Arizona High School is the Criminals.
Carlsbad, New Mexico High School is the Cavemen.
The Philippine Basketball League had teams that were sponsored by companies, and the company names were part of the team names. You had teams like the Hapee Complete Protectors, the Nutri-licious Juicers, the Rain or Shine Elasto Painters, and the Chaz Perfume.
I think my all time favorite mascot was the Macon, Georgia minor league ice hockey team – the Macon Whoopee.
When I was a kid * I * thought “Butte” rhymed with “gut.”
Maybe those were the same Pirates that Arrow sang about: “They live in poop, madam…” 
The Nebraska [del]Cornholers[/del] Cornhuskers used to be called the Bugeaters.
