We Work Hard, We Play Hard
Besides the Pirates hitting .500 again, the biggest Pittsburgh sports news this week appears to be the introduction of a Steelers mascot.
Yes, every football team should have its Stakhanovian industrial hero, its larger-than-life-sized working-class Muppet.
The mascot is being named by way of a fan contest. Off the top of my head I would suggest just calling him by his last name, maybe something ethnic and mascot-sounding like “Foamkowski.” As in, “Yo, Foamkahski, sitcher fat foam head dahn, me’n the guys back here can’t see nothin on the fild.”
I think the Steelers should get by without a mascot. I do think, though, that they should have a corps of beefy hardhat-wearing men who blow a whistle after every Steelers touchdown and break it down to Everybody Dance Now.
Yes, every football team should have its Stakhanovian industrial hero, its larger-than-life-sized working-class Muppet.
The mascot is being named by way of a fan contest. Off the top of my head I would suggest just calling him by his last name, maybe something ethnic and mascot-sounding like “Foamkowski.” As in, “Yo, Foamkahski, sitcher fat foam head dahn, me’n the guys back here can’t see nothin on the fild.”
I think the Steelers should get by without a mascot. I do think, though, that they should have a corps of beefy hardhat-wearing men who blow a whistle after every Steelers touchdown and break it down to Everybody Dance Now.
3 Comments:
Yeh we've been talking about the new Steelers mascot over at Highbrid Nation. Our readers don't seem to care for him but I'm sitting on the fence. Its just hard for me to picture the guy lasting to long. My vote for his name though? Terrible Terry :)
My first thought about the mascot was, "Can he return kicks?"
As far as the name goes, I think naming him "Roscoe" after the gay steel worker in the Simpsons clip would be appropriate (it wouldn't be the first instance of a Simpsons plot point being appropriated by a professional sports team). More appropriate would be a mascot that actually represents the city's current economic situation; something along the lines of "Amit the Ph.D. Candidate in Cognitive Science".
The name I'd be most enthusiastic about, though, would be Hunky Steelworker -- a conclusion that I think is being independently reached by others who remember that statue-naming flap from several years ago. Even if the term is insulting after all, I say what better time to recontextualize a slur against some of the Pittsburgh area's ethnic whites.
I like the throwback jersey, though I do find it a little troubling that they threw them back to the team's long period of perennial non-contention. I guess that's what you've got to work with if you want to throw back any further than the mid-70s, though; at least the city actually had a healthy steel industry then.
I think the Read My Blog guy there has a point; I'd be willing to give pretty good odds that Roscoe Foamkowski's stage name turns out to be "Terrible" someone.
Best to avoid the "Hunky Steelworker" thing. We're talking about a sports mascot here! Racist stereotypes have no place in the world of sports mascots!
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