While researching college mascots today, I encountered this history of Indiana State University’s unique “Sycamores” mascot. I applaud the writer for subtlety:
… The problem has been that a Sycamore is a tree and does not lend itself very well to creation of a mascot. Athletic teams have been known in the past as ?The Fighting Trees,? which was not considered a very glamorous or intimidating a concept. For a period of time in the 1950s and 1960s, there actually was a tree mascot developed, but this posed obvious problems of embarrassment with other mascots, when the University played such schools as the Butler Bulldogs or the Ball State Cardinals.
