Everything needs a reboot these days. Classic movies, bad movies, television series, and now, apparently, bad college mascots.
My alma mater, Saint Louis University, has decided after a few decades of service to reboot its mascot, the Billiken.
What is a Billiken, you ask? Good question! It’s the most popular question we Billikens get after: “Wait. Don’t you mean Washington University in St. Louis?”
According to the history guide we were taught at freshman orientation, it’s a mythical, Buddha-esque being that represents “things as they ought to be.” During the 1904 World’s Fair, held in St. Louis, it was a viral craze… like Harambe.
A fat, baby-like elfish creature with a tuft of hair, you’re supposed to rub its belly for good luck. Like those bizarre Olympic mascots that stick around years after the Olympics are gone, the Billiken endured in Saint Louis after the World’s Fair. It was enshrined in local history when the now-nonexistent football team at SLU was coached by a man named John Bender, who resembled a Billiken. They called the team “Bender’s Billikens.” The name stuck, and for over 100 years Saint Louis U. has been tied to the Billiken.
Routinely ranked one of the worst or oddest college mascots out there, SLU grads had come to terms with their fate and embraced the old Billiken. Lots of midwestern men who attended there, like me, can relate to the old Billiken. There was, arguably, charm in the outdated branding of a pale, white, doughy mascot winking with a smile.
The old mascot, apparently not old enough to qualify as “retro” did, admittedly, haunt dreams. A potential basketball commit dreamed: “I was being chased by a Billiken. In my dream I was running and I went to the arena — and that’s when the Billiken finally caught me.” In the end, he chose to play for and attend SLU, despite the invasion of dream privacy.
This new mascot geared towards Generation Z is absolutely horrifying and will haunt more than just the dreams of basketball recruits.
Its face looks like the bow of a Zumwalt class destroyer. Inexplicably, the once-lovable, if creepy, Billiken looks sinister and is sporting a two face like Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight. Perhaps designed by committee, the attempt to force in the university’s fleur-de-lis branding into the hair just doesn’t work. It looks like more like a Mississippi River steamboat smokestack than it does hair. At least the old Billiken, Billy, had actual hair.
Everybody, especially parents, seem to hate it. And they should. My first reaction to it was that of Kevin McAllister from Home Alone:
Woof.
Like the Nicene creed, nobody really loved the old Billiken, but they didn’t hate it, either. After a while, we all got used to it and it became the tradition. Messing around with tradition and inserting serious-sounding words like “consubstantial” created unnecessary chaos that upset the existing order. It didn’t need to be done. Same with redesigning the Billiken.
Catholic scholars, SLU grads, and movie nerds know that “the exorcism” the famed movie is based on took place in St. Louis, not at Georgetown.
Perhaps SLU’s administrators should consider exorcising this demon before it haunts the dreams of children and/or kills us all.
