The Crusader's Q&A with OU Mascot
November 9th 2009 20:51
I recently had a chance to sit down with OU Mascot Coach Erik Gransberg and current mascot Aaron Leddy for a talk about the finer points of mascot life. Here's what they had to say.
Q: What drew you to becoming a mascot?
Coach Gransberg: It was that there's all those screaming fans, and there's not a lot of mediums that you can feel, you know, as a 5-foot-8, 160 pund guy you can go perform in front of 95,000 people.
Aaron Leddy: I like the fact that you can go onto the field and no one knows who you are. You become someone else. You become Boomer. You become Sooner, and portray this character that everyone sees.
Q: What's the worst thing about being a mascot?
Gransberg: That's easy. The worst thing about being a mascot, for me, is the laundry. We have eight costumes. We trash all of them on Game Day. You know, when you put that suit on it weighs six pounds. When you take it off it weighs 30. It's about 24 pounds of nasty man juice and synthetic fur and it's just nasty. It's horrible.
Q: What's been your favorite mascot moment?
Leddy: It was a mascot dunk-off, actually, during one of the time-outs, and so, bascially long-story-short I did a front-flip dunk, and won it, in the big horse suit. It was the first time I attempted it in front of a live audience and it was a packed house so the crowd went crazy.
Q: What was it like being in the Capital One Mascot Bowl?
Leddy: It was a great honor to be able to represent the university in that way and to be chosen to go down there and do video for the Web site and make commercials that you see during football games.
Q: Which mascot did you click with the most?
Leddy: I think the guy I clicked with the most was the South Dakota State mascot, the Jack Rabbit. We just had the most in common. We're all mascots, but we all have things that we do outside of that. He's living in Californis right now and living out there and trying to do the acting thing. We were just talking about all of that and being in front of camera sets. It was definitely something that we had in common. It was cool.
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