Hiram Cowhey/Cardinal Points
By Sydney Blake
Burghy was booted out of the bracket for this year’s Mascot Madness as a result of there not being enough votes for the cardinal mascot to make it past round two March 16.
Each year since 2013, the State University of New York has hosted a spinoff from the basketball brackets of March Madness creating mascot madness; a tournament to find out the best mascot out of the SUNY schools. Each school has to go through five rounds against about 30 different other schools to win. Throughout 13 years of participation, Plattsburgh’s mascot Burghy has never seen a win.
There are various ways the school has tried to share mascot madness information and the link to vote by email, social media platforms and word of mouth. However, after 13 years of Burghy losing, it may be safe to say our school is not rocking the red proudly.
According to the SUNY mascot madness page, Burghy won the first round of voting against Potsdam’s Max C. Bear mascot by about 30%, but lost round two voting by 0.3% against Farmingdale’s mascot Ram-bo. Each year our school tries to campaign and remind students to vote, but we come up short every time.
The brackets are separated into four locational regions to start, and the final school has to survive five rounds of voting to win. Sounds easy enough. However, with the competition being between different sized colleges, bigger colleges within SUNY have an advantage.
In 2013 the year the event started, New Paltz won the competition with 1,104 enrolled at their school during the time. Compared to Plattsburgh’s 2024 enrollment of 4,541 students, New Paltz wasn’t working with a lot. Their win had the smallest enrollment number out of all the winners throughout the years. I can give this grace as it was the first year of mascot madness.
After the 2013 win, the rest of the schools that won had about 5,000 or more enrolled students. The highest number of enrollment from a winner was Stony Brooks’ Wolfie in 2022 and 2023 with the amount ranging from 26,000 to 26,689 students. This makes it feel as though the competition is enrollment based.
This would be an easy way out, but there are other schools that haven’t won who have high enrollment numbers. For example, the same two years Stony Brook won, the University of Buffalo did not win and had an enrollment of 31,903 students.
I believe that Burghy tries his hardest to get students to participate and have school spirit by posting fun videos on the Plattsburgh media page, participating in events and showing up to sporting games to support the cardinal country. Sadly, students don’t seem to have the same appreciation Burghy has for Plattsburgh.
I’ve heard of several students skipping over the voting links sent out, not knowing about the event or even voting against Burghy for personal reasons. Have students given up on our cardinal mascot?
Burghy is meant to represent our school’s community and pride. As a school, I think we should try to get more involved with the campus and the life surrounding it to give our school real pride.
We’re not just voting for our school mascot to win. We’re also showing our support and care for the work our faculty and students provide one another to create a positive experience on campus.
So mark your calendars to prepare yourself for next year’s mascot madness in hopes of having Burghy fly through the ranks and win.
