Rodger Sherman

And I was like – I just – he was definitely less of a professional than the other mascots on the scene.

And he lost to North Carolina too. Yeah. He ruined everything.

Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot going on. Was the word you said metaphysical, cosmological? Yeah. There's a lot of that going on.

I remember one time the ACC and the Big East were both in New York. The ACC was at Barclays, and Red Panda did both. And I was like, good pull, Red Panda.

So going region by region here in the West, you know, again, once again, we're skipping all the single digit seeds. We're here just to talk about the University of Nebraska at Omaha and their first NCAA tournament, the 15 seed.

What I love about this team is that in December, when they were, I believe, four and nine, their team started a tradition of just beating the crap out of a trash can in the locker room before the games. And it worked. They were the best team in the Summit League. They won the conference. They made the NCAA tournament, they got the bid. And I think this is great strategy.

First of all, they really go at these trash cans.

Yeah, they really go at these trash cans. I saw a video where one of the guys jumps off like a fridge onto it and does like a wrestling move. And he's like a player on the team. And I was like, that seems like a lot of, like a little risky move just to beat up a trash can.

Trash can destruction circle.

I'm not sure if it's a BYO situation where they're at like a road game. They're going to destroy your team's like the trash can you purchased. Ooh, that's a good question. I'm not sure how they are handling the logistics of the NCAA tournament. You know, they're all going to neutral sites.

So like I was saying, they were four and nine and the assistant coach decided to do it as a motivational tool. And people are like, it turned around their season after that point. I think the actual thing that turned around their season is just that they had a really hard non-conference schedule. And they were a pretty good team in the Summit League.

And then they started conference play and they started winning. So like incredible job by that assistant coach to realize the perfect time to deploy your motivational tactic is when your team has just played like Iowa State and I think like Minnesota and some other, you know,

big non-conference teams and then the rest of your your season is is against uh south dakota south dakota state north dakota north dakota state st thomas um so smart thinking by him i also there was a quote by i was reading one of the stories about the trash can situation and he said he confirmed that none of the trash cans they beat up have mothers and fathers they're all orphaned they're all

I'm not sure what his point was there.

I think he was trying to say like, there's no one feeling bad on their behalf, but that somehow made it sadder to me.

The Trash Kids thought they were safe for a few years because the Astros really made it seem like that was an uncool thing to do. And now everyone's beating them. And what I really liked when they won the Summit League tournament, the— I'm not sure how this fits into the mythology of it, but they were presented the trophy out of a trash can.

They hoisted it out of there, which was really beautiful.

They seemed pretty chill with that one.

And you know something? Every time when I saw her at both the Big East and the ACC, both times I was like, this is incredible. This is better than the basketball.

Of the teams in this region, the one that I love the most is the Akron Zips. I have come in my Akron Zips t-shirt.

Are you familiar? Do you know the mascot? Do you know the mascot of the Akron Zips?

There's a kangaroo, correct? And do you know any other details?

You know zip about them? Jesus Christ. I didn't plan that. I'm just really funny.

Akron primarily produces two things, rubber and LeBron James. And at some point in the 1920s or 30s, The rubber companies also produce zippers. And like this is like this was like new technology at the time. Zippers are kind of one of those things that I assumed had been around for hundreds of years.

But like you watch like movies set in the 1800s and they all have like elaborate buckles and stuff. They're not right. Like there aren't zippers there. Like we invented zippers at some point. There was new technology and the people in Akron were very excited about it so much so.

And I think it's associated with the rubber, like they were making rubber shoes with zippers on them or something like that.

Which is separate from Goodyear, which is also a tire company based in Akron, Ohio. And they have the Goodyear blimp there. I flew in the Goodyear blimp. I'm getting off topic here. When I was in Akron, they let me fly in the Goodyear blimp wearing this t-shirt. Of course they did. Anyway, so they named the team the Zippers. Zippers. later shortened to Zips to celebrate Akron's zippers.

You know, he's trying to steal her thunder.

And they were like, what mascot do we have that we can, you know, signify the zipper? So they decided to make a kangaroo with a pouch with a zipper on it. Which, this pouch does not seem... I don't see a zipper. But originally, the pouch was zipped, you know, keep your babies from falling out, etc. But here's what I think is great about this. Only female kangaroos have pouches. Yes.

Male kangaroos do not. So they were, I believe, one of two Division I schools whose mascot is explicitly female. The other being the Delaware Blue Hens. Yes. But which, you know, there's so many Gamecocks and Roosters. And the default is to make your mascot a guy, even if it's...

And North Carolina has some giant balls. Huge balls.

Just big old balls.

I believe so. I know that Akron is the only one in FBS football, like of the top tier. I'm pretty confident there are no other explicitly female mascots out there.

Normally, when a school has a mascot, it's either male or, like, at some cases, like, Florida, they will have, like, or NC State, they have the male and the female mascot, and there's always a really weird, like, dynamic.

Baylor has a male and a lady, like, so, and they have to signify that one of them is male. And that one is just like a default version of the animal. Like Albert the gator just looks like an alligator walking on two legs. Mr. Wolf just looks like a wolf walking on two legs. And then the female version, like they always have lipstick.

Which is not actually a thing that you put on animals.

Yes, yes, yes. And they're always either like, there's always like a weird backstory where they're like either married or siblings.

But I'm just glad that Akron, when they came up with this mascot in the 40s and 50s, were laying out, you know, a vision for female sports fandom, that you can be a lady kangaroo, and they didn't lipstick her up or put her in weird clothing. Right, I wouldn't even know. You wouldn't even know. It's just, there's not that many differences in the wild between... Although she is gyrating.

Are you saying that that's... I've seen some male mascots gyrate.

You went to the kangaroo, Papa? I'm just saying.

The lady bears. The lady volunteers. The lady vols, the lady cocks. Wait, is it really the lady cocks? No, they go by game cocks, but there's merch that says lady cocks. People say lady cocks. That's pretty cool. I should probably buy one of those. Yeah, I was going to say that. That sounds popular. I would definitely buy one.

The really weird one for me is that Central Arkansas, the team names are the Bears and the Sugar Bears.

Yeah.

And Akron avoids all of these concerns by just being like, yeah, we're the Zips. Yeah, she's carrying babies in her pouch. She doesn't care. She loves our teams, our 1-11 football team and our extremely successful men's basketball and men's soccer teams.

Absolutely. Go Zips. I've been on the Goodyear blimp. I will support Akron until the day I die.

I'd like to hone in on the UC San Diego Tritons. First of all, actually a good team. Like, I'm not trying to take away from Akron or Uno. They're like top 40 on Ken Palm. They should not be a 12 seed. They have the guy who leads the nation in steals. They're like two point underdogs against Michigan as a 12 seed. So that's the basketball talk. This is their first tournament.

It's their first year of eligibility since they transferred up from Division 2. Both the men's and the women's teams made it into the tournament.

They were D2 four seasons ago. And when you transfer up from Division 2 to Division 1, you have to take four years off. And they were not allowed to play in the NCAA tournament. This year they are. They were incredible. And they are the Tritons. The reason they're named that is because UC San Diego, it's a pretty good school.

They're host to the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Oceanographic Institute that has like made a ton of like climate change discoveries. They wanted to honor that. And also it's San Diego. It's on the beach. They have water and stuff. So they're the Tritons. Their name, their mascot is King Triton. He's the god of the seas.

I saw him last year and I tweeted about it. And I was like, for a second, I thought it was just a guy doing like gymnastics by himself. And then the Chihuahua came out and I was pumped. And he replied like, yeah, this is my life. Like, no one is there for me. Everyone's here for the Chihuahua.

He's a guy wearing a, you know, I don't know why Poseidon and Triton are pictured wearing like the same things that Greek people on land did. Because like you think the robes like the tokens would be not very useful underwater.

The mascot looks the same, like their costume mascot looks almost identical to the Little Mermaid version of Triton. A five crown cap and he's holding a trident, which in the Little Mermaid like shoots out like fire and destroy stuff. Right. But the mascot unclear whether or not he can do that.

Yeah, I'm on his side. Like, he was a little bit over the top, but, like, first of all, humans are bad is, like, a pretty solid take.

And, like, his 16-year-old daughter is going to go marry some... like the only human being she's ever seen before like she's 16 and she's gonna cut off her tail and have legs like yeah a little and he's like prince eric is yeah he's overrated he's selfish a little desperate on ariel's part and he's very reasonably like chill out don't like go to the surface where you can't breathe can she breathe

That is the most... There are some problematic relationships in Disney movies, but... Prince likely of adult age with 16-year-old non-talking mermaid. That's really bad.

Do you feel like they did a good job with the four regions of our country being East, South, West, and Midwest? Like, we never talk about, like, the North, but I think that's what they're trying to get. Anyway, I'm thinking too much about the regions.

My favorite player in the NCAA tournament is in this bracket. He is not likely to win, nor is he likely to be successful at the thing which drew me to him. I'm talking about Wofford's Tyler Filowich. Center led the conference in rebounding and field goal percentage, last place in the conference in free throw percentage.

28 at the time. He decided to switch from overhand regular free throws, at which he was shooting 28%, to underhanded, commonly referred to as granny style free throws. Although, I'm not sure how that name, I've never seen any grandmothers play basketball.

He's a big boy. He's a center. He dominates in the paint. So this is like, he was shooting 28%. Someone on his coaching staff had a connection with Rick Barry, the NBA Hall of Famer.

The unhanded free throw, whose sons, some of his sons shot underhanded. He shot like 90% for his career. He flew to South Carolina. to teach our guy Kyler here how to shoot underhanded free throws. He switched in February. It's the last season of his career. He's a fifth-year senior. This is his time to shine. It's now or never. He switches to underhanded free throws.

The ending of the story that you've written in your head.

And the story that you probably cooked up in your head is that he switched and he's good at it. He's not. He still sucks at shooting free throws. He's shooting 35% from the line since he switched to underhand.

It's an improvement. In the SOCON tournament, in the first two games, he shot one for five and then one for five again. He's really just kind of hucking it off the backboard there. It's so inspiring to watch him go out there having dedicated so much effort to this thing that can change this last moment of his career.

Everyone is yelling at him from the stands, calling him names, telling him he shouldn't be doing this. And he's still bad at it and he still persists. And he made it to the NCAA tournament. And this is what this moment is all about. These teams from all across the country, which are trying weird things, and some of them aren't even that good at them. And they have this one day where,

to beat a better team. And sometimes that weird thing they do works and we remember them forever. And sometimes it doesn't and we just move on. It's just, you don't see this in any other league where you see the Giants and these people trying to figure out how to play basketball for the first time.

You're right. The NBA, everyone has figured out how to play basketball.

The teams, the shooting forms, the teams have the same. I'm not saying it's bad. They're very good at basketball. They're extremely good at it. The product is probably generally more entertaining. I'm fine saying that even as a college basketball fan. The thing that's great about college basketball is you have these 360 teams. Some of them are playing like one, three, one zones.

And sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn't. Some of them have guys who do not know how to shoot free throws. And then you throw them all in this one tournament and you see what happens. And sometimes the weird stuff works. Sometimes the better team wins. And this is what March is all about. And I'm a little bit emotional for our boy Kyler.

If he goes out there and he shoots two for four in a surprise victory, I'm going to cry. I'm going to sit in my house and I'm going to cry because of how beautiful it is.

Yeah, we've got a couple 15 over twos here, but cosmologically, it has been decreed.

You know who I've seen in recent weeks who is definitely at multiple tournaments? There's a woman who does jump ropes, and on the other end of the jump rope is a dog, and then jumping the jump rope in the middle is a third dog.

Yet.

We'll get this aggregated. NCAA President Lucy campaign.

They had a game. They had games at IU. Yeah. At Assembly Hall.

Yeah, she was at multiple conference tournaments. It's a big week for the halftime entertainers of the world.

Come on, you gotta go do it. What did you mean by him and my dad are in the Elvis community? I'm glad you asked. Good follow up.

I found out that there's someone in North Carolina that belongs in jail.

Some people, when they throw up from something, they never have it again.

Does it do basketball games? Yeah, does it halftime?

And you know what? The name of the stadium where we saw Ramsey's balls and there was a Panther ball testicle situation, the name of the stadium, it's BOFA. It's Bank of America. We saw the testes at BOFA and lived.

TikTok has flooded the zone with pets doing cool stuff, but I only care if they can do it in the seven minutes in between the end of the second quarter and the teams coming out for warmups. If you can massage that into something at home and turn it into like a video, I don't believe it. I don't buy it. I need to see it in person before the team comes out to shoot some 16 footers.

So I went to 62 games in the 2023 season.

And this season, I did not do that. This season, I slept. That was like a one-time bit for me. Lucy has now done multiple seasons of like seeing dozens of games. So we're probably, you'll probably catch me next year.

From like a stadium food?

I do not know you as a vomiter, a projectile vomiter.

I'm really glad we asked her. I wasn't expecting that much detail about the vomit. I thought she was just going to say, yeah, it was bad.

First of all, I don't pay attention to any of the teams with single digits. You know, there's several teams that are apparently good at college basketball this year. We're not here to talk about those.

We're here to talk about the teams that went like 17-1 in their conferences, and I believe they can pull the upset. And also, they've never been to the NCAA tournament before. And also, they have a unique mascot. Those are who I'm honed in on.

I've been thinking about this a lot in recent days and like the conference tournament season is the number one event for like the third tier sporting arenas besides like AEW wrestling. And it's also the number one week for Red Panda. She does like three tournaments that week.

Me? Lucy? Like, that's impressive for one 16-year-old, yeah.

Generally, the understanding in the college basketball universe is that Duke is the evil one of the two schools. Correct.

It's UNC, and we just didn't realize it all these years.

No, I'm just crossing UNC off.

I just remembered another place I met you, which was the Duke's Mayo Bowl between West Virginia and North Carolina, where we were on the sidelines with the North Carolina Ram. Yes. Ramses. Ramses, yes. His balls are huge. Really. They're giant. You know, they tend to focus on the front with the horns, but there's, it's a Ram. It's not a sheep.

I don't know. She lost her unicycle in transit one time. Well, that's why she needs one.

He has horns painted blue. The costume mascot, no testicles. Yeah, not. Correct. Not, I mean, not that we can see. He's wearing clothing, so.

Wait, wait. The costume mascot, not the goat.

Okay.

Yeah, that's a fun part of being a college basketball.

There's, like, if you go to a college basketball tournament and you have a press pass and you're in the behind-the-scenes area, you will see a lot of mascots, like, with their head off drinking, like, some Gatorade or whatever to stay.

I remember I was at the St. Peter's one a couple years ago, and, like... Like at UNC, there must be like 20 guys like trying to be the UNC mascot. But like the St. Peter's guy was really chill. And I just remember him walking off the – walking out of the area and just being like, hey, where's the pizza?