By Sam Vargo
ATHENS, Ohio – Ohio University, the longtime “dwarf” of America's gigantic “party schools,” has changed its mascot from “the Bobcats” to “the Drunken, Crazy, Hell-Raising Fools.”
“Ohio University is a constant among a host of ever-changing mega-monster universities who annually vie for top Party School status,” said Ulysses J. Sickofant, a home-brewmeister and self-proclaimed party school expert who lives in Huntington, West Virginia.
The new visual mascot for OU will be a leather-clad, grisly biker dude with a “Bikers from Hell” patch and a very large portrait of a saber-toothed tiger tattooed on his bare chest.
“Texas, Florida and Wisconsin took respective first, second and third places this year,” Sickofant said. “For all we know, the University of Texas may become a Jesuit monastery before OU gets off the party school list. OU's been on sundry party school lists ever since God invented alcohol. What’s Texas? It’s an overly glorified cow pasture. Why the hell do you think their mascot is a cow with very, very big horns?! If UT makes the No. 1 next year I’ll drink all the whiskey in Texas.”
Rounding out the top ten, according to the party school researching team at PubClub.com, are: 4) The University of Alabama, 5) the University of California at Santa Barbara, 6) the University of Georgia, 7) Ohio University, 8) Florida State, 9) the University of Arizona and 10) the University of Southern California.
“I'm sure some people in Texas would love to change their mascot from the Longhorns to the Drunken, Crazy, Hell Raising Fools,” Sickofant added. “But Texas is such a super-power in sports. It's a premier super-dynamo sports school with a penchant for producing great football players and foosball wizards. Sports schools never give up their mascots without a good fight. But who ever heard of a Bobcat being a mascot? It’s a wimpy little outside wildcat with some lynx-like features. Now the saber-toothed tiger on the big biker’s tattoo – that’s a real predator. Why didn't OU just cut to the chase and pick a sparrow, chipmunk or a bluegill as its former mascot?”
Meantime, Al Thugsley, Administrative Alcohol Czar at OU said, “The administration here has been fighting OU’s image as a party school for a long, long time. We just gave into the stigma and now we’re promoting it as a marketing tool. If you want to party, come to Ohio University in southern Ohio. Our new mascot looks like something off an old Molly Hatchet cover!”
Most of the schools in the top 10 are athletic powerhouses. Along with playing hard comes partying hard and sometimes, even studying hard. The “Sunshine State” is very well represented this year on PubClub.com, with Florida taking second place and Florida State coming in at eighth place. Florida won both the NCAA Division I football and basketball crowns last year and FSU has had a few national pigskin tops in the past few decades, too.
“Jimmy Buffet would be proud,” Sickofant said of Florida's two rankings on the Party Hearty list. “He's made so many songs about having fun, drinking and boating, fishing and playing music in Florida. Is a party school song next?”
“No. No. No,” Buffet said in a very brief phone interview with Points in Case. “I made a song with Allen Jackson about drinking some drink called a Hurricane and later that summer, Hurricane Katrina hit. I don't want to be responsible for the downfall of Generation Z. I've already been blamed for the downfall of several other generations.”
Meantime, Ohio University, which practically lies in the wilderness of Appalachian “No Man's Land,” is gearing up already for its world famous Halloween party this fall. OU teeters just below the 20,000 mark for total enrollment most years. OU’s student body is a collective midget compared to Texas, with a student body of 48,000, Florida with 46,000 students, USC with 33,000, the University of Georgia with 33,959, and Arizona and Florida State each having about 40,000 students.
When asked about the “Gauchos” of the University of California at Santa Barbara, Sickofant said, “What about them? They're a small school that made the list this year. Is that really eventful? Every year small schools make the ‘Sweet 16' Basketball tournament. I doubt the Gauchos will be around next year's list, but the Drunken, Crazy, Hell-Raising Fools of Athens, Ohio will.”
When asked if he'd ever partied at OU, Sickofant said, “No. I'm afraid of rowdy crowds and usually drink alone in my basement or garage.” The 33-year-old, who is also an adjunct instructor of mathematics for a fly-by-night Internet-based university, lives only 40 minutes from OU.