This is has to be low grade torture. Having to flap 3500x during a 40 point loss for your 0-5 basketball team. Getting chirped in the Instagram comments. All for a full scholarship and say you were a member of the basketball team? No thanks. Give me the debt.
For those that don’t know about the Saint Joes Hawk mascot, the tradition of flapping it’s wings the whole game started back in the 1950s when some cheerleader/ex-marine (that is an insane combo for 1950) raised $120 to buy a costume. Since then the Hawk has flapped it’s wings at every single men’s and women’s basketball game even when the Rhode Island Ram tried to throw an inner tube over it’s head to stop it from flapping. The Hawk flapping his wings as he’s being held back from killing the ram with no head on is unintentionally hilarious!
One thing they don’t tell you about the Hawk is it smells like absolute shit. Back in the travel basketball days we always went to a local college to watch them practice before the season. The year Saint Joes went to the Elite Eight we met the whole team not knowing they were about to have their best season ever and the Player of the Year in Jameer Nelson. I had a basketball signed by that whole squad. Delonte West was cool as shit. Dwayne Jones was the biggest human I’d ever seen. We saw Pat Carroll in the parking lot and attacked him like he was a rockstar. I sold that ball a couple years ago for $110 and won some college football bets with the money. But what I remember most from that day was the foul odor of the Hawk. The Hawk literally smelled like it had died. He was at the end of the autograph line right by the free pretzels and Sprite. I had to stop breathing to get my pretzel. I wanted to go back and for more free pretzels, but the smell of rotting bird carcass in a 80 degree was too much to handle. You think it’s bad being the Hawk? Pray for the people that have to sit in the same room as him for three hours.
