College football mascots just as good at keeping their identities secret as firing up a crowd

EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Ross Ramsey enjoys spending time with fellow alums at Michigan State football tailgates.

These aren’t just any old former Spartans, though.

They were Sparty himself – something few knew when Ramsey and his pals donned the muscular mascot suit two decades ago.

“Once you are done being Sparty, you can tell others that you were Sparty,” said Ramsey, a physician and hospital administrator in Pigeon, Michigan. “And clearly you have a close bond with those others who were in the same role as you, because they couldn’t share that experience with anyone else at the time, either.”

Ramsey and his buddies are members of an elite fellowship of ex-mascots. Men and women who once carried on as Big Al, Alabama’s lovable elephant; the Disney-inspired Oregon Duck; Wisconsin’s Bucky Badger and many more. We’re talking humans in suits, not live animal mascots, which also are fixtures on college football Saturdays.

The job for costumed mascots is to fire up the crowd, bring a smile to a fan’s face and symbolically represent the university.

“When you think of Michigan State, you think of Sparty. And everybody knows what the mascot is,” said Phil Lator, another former Sparty who joins Ramsey at the tailgates and also successfully concealed his alter ego during his tenure in East Lansing.

Anonymity is the name of the game for many college mascots.

“Some programs value secrecy so highly that multiple performers report to the stadium but only learn in the moment who will actually be suiting up,” said Jeff Birdsell, a communication professor at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. Birdsell has experience in these matters, having served as Point Loma’s mascot as an undergrad, as well as inhabiting suits for minor league baseball, NBA G League and indoor soccer teams.

“Some schools have traditions where they work hard to keep the performers anonymous so that there can be a big reveal as part of graduation ceremonies,” he said.

Enter Nicole Hurley, who came clean about her Cocky past at South Carolina’s spring commencement, rolling into the arena wearing her cap, gown and oversized yellow bird feet of the bird mascot.

“When I walked across the stage, I felt so much joy. The whole arena started to clap and cheer, and it made me emotional,” said Hurley, a pediatric hematology oncology nurse in Charleston, South Carolina.

Only Hurley’s roommates and parents knew about her second life, which included attending weddings, birthday parties, baby showers and other private events; firing up the crowd at Williams-Brice Stadium and rushing the floor after a 2023 men’s basketball victory at Kentucky.

“There were countless moments that I had to change into my suit in my car, pretty much lie to every person about how I worked a job in athletics and created excuses when I was not free on the weekends due to working private events,” Hurley said. “When people I know would come up to take a photo with me when I was Cocky and they had no idea I was the one under the suit was the craziest feeling.”

Carlos Polanco-Zaccardi, whose years inside Miami’s Sebastian the Ibis costume were known only to a select few, also became proficient at hiding his true identity. The 2025 graduate of the “U” toted his bird get-up around campus in an enormous duffel bag. When confronted, Polanco-Zaccardi would supply a white lie depending on the questioner.

“For my friends, I told them that I was one of the party performers on stilts that perform at weddings, bar mitzvahs and birthday parties,” he said.

Like the Michigan State guys, Hurley and Polanco-Zaccardi, costumed performers at the collegiate level almost always are students, said Birdsell, the professor and mascot enthusiast.

“How they get the gig has a range of origin stories,” he said. “I, for example, got my start at a smaller school after developing a reputation as a loudmouthed superfan.”

That intense school pride doesn’t go away for many ex-mascots, long after they’ve stopped wearing the fur. Just ask Scott Ferry, another Sparty alum and tailgate regular whose passion for the green-and-white hasn’t ebbed.

“The spirit of the university is critical,” said Ferry, who these days owns and operates a farm and meat-processing facility an hour south of campus. “We don’t want to just be an individual. We want to be the icon of the university at all times.”

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