Ranking college football's 10 scariest mascots, from Oski to Purdue Pete Craig Meyer, USA TODAY NETWORKOctober 31, 2025 at 3:09 AM 0 For much of the past week, tens of millions of people across the country have been celebrating Halloween. The holiday's an annual opportunity for trickortreating children and partying adults to dress up in costumes. Sometimes, those getups are meant to scare. Other times, they're trying to draw some laughs. For many in or having just gotten out of college, they can serve what we'll generously call other purposes.
- - Ranking college football's 10 scariest mascots, from Oski to Purdue Pete
Craig Meyer, USA TODAY NETWORKOctober 31, 2025 at 3:09 AM
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For much of the past week, tens of millions of people across the country have been celebrating Halloween.
The holiday's an annual opportunity for trick-or-treating children and partying adults to dress up in costumes. Sometimes, those get-ups are meant to scare. Other times, they're trying to draw some laughs. For many in or having just gotten out of college, they can serve what we'll generously call other purposes.
In the world of college sports, there's a subset of people for whom getting dressed up isn't just a once-a-year occurrence. It's a way of life.
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Mascots are a part of the pageantry of college football, the costumed men and women who roam sidelines, cheer on their teams and entertain the crowd. Many of those mascots are cartoonish depictions of their school's nickname, usually meant to appeal to children (or, at the very least, not frighten them).
Others, whether intentional or not, are slightly more terrifying, striking fear into the hearts of kids and adults alike.
In honor of America's spookiest holiday, here's USA TODAY's ranking of the 10 scariest FBS mascots:
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Scariest college football mascots10. Louie the Cardinal (Louisville)
Louie The Cardinal wears glasses to honor head coach Pat Kelsey during their game against Duke at the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, Ky. on Dec. 8, 2024.
While the cardinal makes sense as Louisville's mascot — it's the state bird of Kentucky, after all — a bird that typically weighs one or two ounces isn't exactly the most intimidating creature. For Louisville, there was a solution to that problem: giving its mascot teeth.
While it wasn't exactly ornithologically correct, the previous iteration of Louie was perfectly acceptable, with a small glimpse of its teeth visible. In 2016, however, the university the outfit, giving Louie a more slender look and a much wider and more terrifying grin, with a pair of chompers that would make a cartoon mafioso biting on a cigar blush. There are other FBS schools with teeth-bearing birds, like Iowa State and Ball State, but none of them are more unnerving than the one that resides in the Derby City.
9. Oski (Cal)
Oct 19, 2024; Berkeley, California, USA; California Golden Bears mascot Oski stands on the sideline before the game against the North Carolina State Wolfpack at California Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images
A bear of any sort is petrifying, with teeth and claws that can tear your flesh and rip out your heart. But something about a bear with an alarmingly oval-shaped head and a dopey smile is even scarier. Don't let the yellow cardigan fool you. This bear's capable of unimaginably horrific things.
8. Gus T. (Tulsa)
It's hard to make a mascot out of a meteorological event, something Tulsa, with its Golden Hurricane moniker, has learned over the years while cycling through several different costumes and characters. In 2023, it unveiled Gus T., a modernized version of its hurricane mascot from the late 1990s and early 2000s. Whether it's his flesh-toned complexion, his Jay Leno-sized chin or his head that makes him look like some kind of deranged baked good, something about Gus just doesn't seem right.
7. The Demon Deacon (Wake Forest)
The rub with Wake Forest's mascot is in the name. What would normally be a Baptist deacon with a distressingly vacant expression and a cartoonishly oversized bowtie seems like something much more sinister with the idea that a demonic force is lurking inside of him. That looming threat lifts the Demon Deacon over other chilling human mascots at schools like Virginia and Vanderbilt.
6. The Mountaineer (West Virginia)
Nov 23, 2024; Morgantown, West Virginia, USA; The West Virginia Mountaineers mascot celebrates during the first quarter against the UCF Knights at Mountaineer Field at Milan Puskar Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Ben Queen-Imagn Images
Unlike other entrants on this list, West Virginia's mascot is a flesh-and-blood human. Whatever relatability comes from that is undone by the fact he carries around a musket that, as one poor bear learned 13 years ago, works quite effectively.
5. Pistol Pete (Oklahoma State)
What if the West Virginia mascot weren't a human being, but someone wearing a giant, gloomily detailed head and carrying around revolvers loaded with blanks? You've got Pistol Pete.
4. The Tiger (Clemson)
The Clemson Tiger mascot stands near an ESPN camera during a break from live reporting from the Esso Club in Clemson, in January 2016 as the football team prepared for the National Championship in Arizona.
Tigers are one of the most common mascots in college sports, from LSU to Auburn to Missouri. At Clemson, what makes an otherwise cuddly mascot into something scarier are its big, bulging, yellow eyes.
3. Blue Devil (Duke)
Even if you're not particularly religious, a devil with a goatee, horns and a trident is prone to send a chill down your spine. At the FBS level, there are not one, but two devils. While Arizona State's represents a radiant orb that makes life on Earth possible, Duke's represents ... well, Duke.
2. Willie the Wildcat (Kansas State)
Oct. 25: The Kansas State Wildcats mascot Willie poses for a photo during the game against the Kansas Jayhawks at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium.
Willie is an abomination, a wildcat in name only. While many of the mascots on this list have their frightening faults, they're at least committed to their sacred duties, wearing a full costume. Willie, however, is merely a Kansas State student in a full football uniform and a wildcat head, making him some sort of horrifying human-feline hybrid. What happened here? Whoever created this monstrosity was either working with a laughably tiny budget or had an unhinged artistic vision.
1. Purdue Pete (Purdue)
Purdue's Purdue Pete: Purdue Pete was once named second worst among the 128 mascots judged in categories that included "The Sexiest College Mascots in America" and "The Most Offensive College Mascots in America."
Before heading to bed tonight, there's no need to watch a scary movie and be tormented by thoughts of Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers as you lie in bed. Just take a look at this dead-eyed freak and have his image haunt your dreams.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: College football's 10 scariest mascots, from Oski to Purdue Pete
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Published: October 31, 2025 at 12:28PM on Source: ALPHA MAG
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