ziggolfer

March 30th, 2012 at 4:25 PM ^

 

Before my time at Michigan, I was a mascot at another college. I won't mention the name of the mascot or school in order to preserve its integrity, but I will mention it is not a big ten school or anywhere near AA for that matter.



While some of you may argue that the mascot gif is intensely more funny, take the perspective from someone who has been there and back. It's easy to look stupid, and it's really easy to make people laugh.  I remember and incident when I stole another mascot's motor cycle and threw it in the bushes of this mascot's stadium. Everyone thought it was hilarious. I also remember shooting a t-shirt out of out of our stadium while using the t-shirt gun. The list goes on.....

At any rate, the raptor mascot may look funny and I see it as so as well. However, he didn't have to make any facial expressions. No intense camera work was done. Nothing was slowed down in order to capture the moment of hilarity. The Raptor fallind down on roller blades was inevitable and it was set up to be that way. 



I debated it for a while, but I think you have to go with Michigan Mortified Punter. The video work is better, the action is real, and it takes more than just being in a colorful suit with roller blades. 

 

I'd use the mascot signature at this point, but again gotta preserve integrity when it's due

urbanachiever

March 30th, 2012 at 3:23 PM ^

The only reason I'm not voting for the Raptor is that I wouldn't have seen it without this link telling me to vote for Hagerup.  But there's no way in hell I'm voting for Hagerup either

Seth

March 30th, 2012 at 3:30 PM ^

One man can only rec this guy so hard. I need a group effort here:

Raptors Mascot = archetypal antihero

I’ve dome some thinking about why Raptors Mascot appears well on its way to glorious victory, and why I’ve watched it 2,765 times this week alone. My hypothesis is that Raptors Mascot represents the archetypal plot so familiar to us from literature, television, film, and other media, and thus plugs directly in to our collective consciousness’s desire and expectations of being entertained.

Consider how snugly Raptors Mascot conforms to the traditional plot diagram as taught in most high school and college English courses:

EXPOSITION: There is an inflatable dinosaur mascot on Rollerblades.

CONFLICT: Once the mascot hits the arena floor, he loses his balance.

RISING ACTION: His mouth flails uncontrollably as his Rollerblades become more and more unsteady.

CLIMAX: He goes airborne.

FALLING ACTION: He thuds to the arena floor.

RESOLUTION: The tail. My god, the tail.

We cannot label Raptors Mascot the gif representative of Joseph Campbell’s “Hero with a Thousand Faces,” since ultimately he fails in his journey rather than triumphs. But I believe the gif does parallel that of such classic works of the antihero as Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the D’Ubervilles” or The Wire, and this is why we respond to it so enthusiastically.

Benoit Balls

March 30th, 2012 at 3:36 PM ^

and Mortified Michigan punter is in the lead by 74 votes

But I have to say that Raptors gif is the gif that keeps on giving. Not that I'd allow that to cloud my judgement

Hardware Sushi

March 30th, 2012 at 3:45 PM ^

All the non-football SBN posters are against MMP simply because this happens every round with MMP:

A football blog (MGo, EDSBS, or MaizeNBrew) posts a link asking for support. An hour later, domination by MMP. It happened to Hockey Massacre, it's happening here.

I still think Hockey Massacre vs. MMP in the Regional Final was the real championship. Raptor Mascot is hilarious; I think I prefer the simplicity of MMP or the perfect cinematography of Hockey Massacre.

Hardware Sushi

March 30th, 2012 at 6:09 PM ^

I guess we just disagree.

Raptors Mascot is funny but if I wanted a bunch of "fall down go boom"s, I'd put America's Funniest Home Videos on...

Raptors Mascot is staged. It's not that hard to pretend you're terrible at rollerblading/skating. I mean, they're in Canada fergodsakes - the guy in the costume knows how to skate. I guess a personal pre-req for funniest gif is the organic nature of it.

Clarence Beeks

March 30th, 2012 at 3:52 PM ^

I'm sorry, but I have to go with the Raptor. If you haven't seen the entire clip you are doing yourself a disservice. The gif isn't even the funniest part of the whole sequence. Not only did he/she fall down the stairs (before the gif starts), but after the gif stops the costume popped and deflated. Priceless...

YabbaDabbaBlue

March 30th, 2012 at 4:39 PM ^

In addition to my laughing harder at the Raptor, I would rather laugh at misfortune unassociated with Michigan.

A scenario: if Ohio's punter commits the exact same gaffe, facial expression and all, would you vote his derpiness over Hagerup's?