Extended ESPN ad on The University of Mississippi’s Mascot Decision

Extended version of ESPN’s 2010 Ole Miss Star Wars commercial

I’m finally getting around to posting videos that I’ve done or been in. This one is mainly cute, not a contribution to public philosophy…

It was fun to do. I come in around 3 minutes in, for the extended version of the ad, but my soundbite didn’t make the shorter version that aired on TV.

This commercial was of interest to ESPN, as they were covering the issue of sports fandom. At the University of Mississippi, we had not had a mascot for years, since the prior one was removed from the field, given his allusion to the plantation-owning Colonel in the Rebel army.

Some students had a pretty clever idea: If we’re to be the Rebels, why not think of the rebels we all know and love, from Star Wars. I thought that was fairly brilliant idea of cultural reinvention. The students’ idea was to choose as our mascot Admiral Ackbar, the character famous for shouting: “It’s a trap!”

[youtube id=”4F4qzPbcFiA”]

We ended up with a pretty generic black bear as our mascot, which is not as fun or as funny as the idea of a Star Wars mascot. That said, come on. We’re talking about furry, fluffy costumes that look like this (on right).

On the one hand, we can understand people who are not all that concerned about a mascot. I was living in Atlanta when the 1996 “Izzy” mascot represented that year’s summer Olympics there. None of us knew “What Izzy?” either…

On the other hand, there can be racist mascots and other troubling ones that convey messages that public institutions should not. This is an interesting example and set of issues to think about in connection with my book in progress, A Culture of Justice.