Outliers: Three cheers for mascots

In case you're wondering what the world of college sports looks like from the perspective of a Quaker mascot, Dr. Robert Wachter is happy to share. Seems the physician, author and teacher was prompted to reminisce about his sports mascot past in the wake of the recent NCAA basketball tourney.

In his “Wachter's World” blog, the chairman of the American Board of Internal Medicine and associate chairman of the University of California at San Francisco department of medicine told of his days as the mascot for the University of Pennsylvania Quakers, the “Cinderella” team of the 1979 NCAA tournament.

“I needed to be funny, quirky, ungraceful, and utterly without shame,” wrote Wachter while describing his audition to wear the mascot's Quaker suit. “(These skills have served me well through my subsequent career.) I got the job.”

Football season was no fun, he recalled. It included being threatened by unruly Cornell fans, standing in the rain and having to go to a police station while in costume to report his car had been stolen.

Basketball season was another story, however, and it included winning the Ivy League championship and qualifying for March Madness and the Big Dance.

“We anticipated a fun game or two, and then back to our studies,” Wachter wrote. But, after scoring an upset win over the top-seeded University of North Carolina, the team went on to defeat Syracuse and St. John's.

“When you're the Cinderella team, you have a feeling of invincibility—that God is on your side,” Wachter recalled. Unfortunately for Penn, Magic Johnson was on Michigan State's side and the Cinderella team was clobbered 101-67 in the semifinal game.

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