Vanguard

Issue date: 4/14/08 Section: News

The University of South Alabama's mascot, Southpaw, won the Best Mascot of the NCAA Tourney sponsored by Redeye, an edition of the Chicago Tribune.
Southpaw received 51 percent of the votes competing against Butler University's mascot, Bruiser the bear receiving 48 percent of the votes in the national championship round.
Brittany Dunn is the person inside the mascot Southpaw.
"I'm very excited that I won, and I'm glad that the student body, faculty and friends all came together to help me win," Dunn said. "I couldn't have done it without them."
In the first round vs. Butler University, Southpaw destroyed the bulldog receiving nearly 85 percent of the 2,029 votes. Up next was Smokey, a Bluetick Coonhound, from the University of Tennessee.
If Smokey was anything like Tennessee men's and women's basketball teams, Southpaw would have a fight on his hands to advance through the second round to the Sweet 16. But, because of an overwhelming fan base of voters, Southpaw won an 88 percent to12 percent decision.
Southpaw then faced St. Joseph University's mascot, the hawk, and University of Arkansas's hog mascot "Big Red" in the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 respectively. Both were close contests with nearly 15,000 fans voting. Though not as lop-sided as the first two rounds, Southpaw squeezed out victories in both.
To win versus the next competitor, Villanova University's mascot, "Will D. Cat," in the final four, Southpaw would definitely need an extra surge of support from his fan base, and that is just what happened.
Gwen Williams, a specialist in the media relations department at USA, sent out mass e-mails to students and faculty members of the University to draw support from the beginning versus Butler, and immediately the responses concerning Southpaw began flowing into her e-mail.

"In the past, we had the most votes' cast," a student in support of the mascot said. "I looked at Memphis' mascot and 5,000 votes had been cast and in our voting there was a little over 1,000."

Students and fans replied "We can do it."

After all the work done by Williams to send out mass e-mails urging everyone to vote, the South Alabama community could only sit and wait to see if Southpaw would make it to the national championship.

Southpaw grabbed 63 percent of the 2,000 votes cast to defeat Villanova and advance to the finals.

Southpaw faced Baylor University's mascot, Bruiser the bear, in the national championship.

Seeing the disparity in votes cast between South Alabama and Baylor, one fan wrote to Williams urging to get the word out on the radio, newspaper and TV newscasts so the entire city would be able to participate and vote for Southpaw.

Williams contacted the local media and NBC 15 news sponsored a link for the community to go to and vote.

"I was pleased with the response that I received," Williams said. "They [students] not only showed their support of our mascot, they showed their jaguar pride."

The voting in the final started off shaky with Baylor cruising out to an early lead getting 65 percent of the votes. A fury of votes rallied Southpaw to turn the tables and gained nearly 70 percent of the votes at one point. When the polls closed, 562,714 votes had been cast. Southpaw came in first having 51 percent of the votes while Bruiser had 48 percent.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools