March Madness 2019 is upon us, and even if you’re not into college basketball enough to root for a particular team, you can still root for the mascots representing those teams! In fact, we know of someone who likes to make their predictions based on the mascots alone. We don’t recommend wagering on it, but it’s pretty entertaining.

The Wofford “Terriers'” mascot is a Boston Terrier, though sadly for Wofford, they were bested earlier today by Kentucky. Oh, the humiliation: Kentucky are the “wildcats.”

University of Washington and Northeastern University are called the “Huskies:”

If one goes by sheer mascot meanness, you’d have to like the Wisconsin Badgers or the Michigan Wolverines, both prickly critters you’re better off avoiding. Want a mascot that no one understands? Our vote goes to the Carolina Tar Heels. What the heck is a tar heel?

We can tell you (because we cheated by looking at the school’s website). The term, “tar heel,” dates back to North Carolina’s early history when the state was a leading producer of supplies for the naval industry. Workers who distilled turpentine from the sticky sap of pine trees and burned pine boughs to produce tar and pitch often went barefoot during hot summer months and (you see where this is going), collected tar on their feet, and especially their heels. Though the terms was unkind in the beginning (it implied that a “tar heel” worked in a lowly trade), North Carolinians fighting in the Civil War turned the meaning around by calling themselves “tar heels” as an expression of state pride.

Back to basketball.

If one goes by mascot popularity, then we have to give points to Ohio State, Mississippi State, Yale, Gardner-Webb and Gonzaga who all have Bulldogs as their mascots. For the person determined to have a little skin in the game by placing a small wager, oddsmakers like the Gonzaga Bulldogs and have put them only behind Duke as favorites to win the whole thing.

Go team!