Mascots in sports–especially animal mascots–create a vision that fans imagine as reality until it becomes tradition. A mascot is a stand-in for how we see ourselves, if only for three or four hours on a Saturday.
The Common Reader, a publication of Washington University in St. Louis, offers the best in reviews, articles and creative non-fiction engaging the essential debates and issues of our time.
The story of Delyte Morris and the Southern Illinois University he created is what Robert A. Harper calls “a story of unlikely success and a tragic end.” It does read like an American tragedy, somehow, based in a rustic start, ambition, ingenuity, and the fallibility of good intentions.
