A couple of years ago, we knew someone who was cajoled into participating in a March Madness Fantasy League. She knew nothing about basketball, didn’t want to know anything about basketball, but went along to get along. As she told us about her situation, we wondered how she was going to select her teams when, as if to read our mind, she cheerfully said she had a plan.
She was going to choose her teams based on their mascots.
As she wasn’t all that invested in the endeavor, this struck us as as good an idea as any. Here we are in March Madness season again, and remembering our friend, we looked at the 2021 playoff teams and their mascots. As a purebred dog-centric site, we’ll naturally root for canine mascots, and this year, there are two serious contenders!
Since 1943, the Georgetown Hoyas have made an appearance at The Show more often than not. Jack the Bulldog is the official mascot of the Georgetown University Hoyas athletic teams, and at least eight living Bulldogs (seven named Jack since 1962) have been “employed” by the school. In 2014, Jack the Bulldog dazzled the crowd with his skateboard prowess:
Recent Bulldogs have come from the Georgetown alumni family of Janice and Marcus Hochstetler, and the current “Jack” (full name John F. Carroll) was born in 2019.
Another Bulldog will make its showing when its Gonzaga Bulldogs (favored by some to win the whole thing) make their appearance. The “Zags” program is seen by some as the closest thing to a major b-ball power in a mid-major conference. Gonzaga has been to every NCAA Tournament held since 1999, a year in which they made it to the Elite Eight. They have also appeared in every weekly poll since the start of the 2016-17 season, a streak of 91 consecutive weeks, tied for the 22nd longest streak in Men’s Basketball history, as well as the longest active streak in the nation.
It seems that one can’t go wrong rooting for a Bulldog this year!
By the way, did you know that the tournament was dubbed “March Madness” by Henry V. Porter, an executive with the Illinois High School Association who wrote an essay about it? The nickname grew to be the official title used by the media and became synonymous with the NCAA thanks to Brent Musburger who called it such in 1982.