Wild's new mascot in good, strange company

The Wild's first mascot, Nordy, was introduced last week mostly to quizzical looks and questions about what he is. The Wild aren't saying what kind animal is. He kind of looks like Huckleberry Hound stuffed inside a Care Bear. But, Nordy is certainly not the worst or strangest mascot cavorting around sporting events. Here are few that make Nordy look good.

The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Blugolds. They don't have a person walking around in a Blugold costume at school sporting events, but I think that's because nobody knows what the hell a Blugold is. I went to UWEC for a year, and nobody could ever tell me what the name means. This story from the student newspaper tries to shed some light on it, but to no avail.

The Stanford Cardinal is another poor collegiate mascot choice. The team is named after... a color. Not birds, or even a singular bird, but the color of the bird. Wow. Talk about crappy. Although the school makes up for their team name with the unofficial "Stanford Tree" that whoops up the crowd with the marching band. See below.

The Columbus Blue Jackets is pretty bad too. I'm pretty sure most people don't even know why they're called the Blue Jackets (it has something to do with the Civil War, I think), but their mascot is even worse. The Blue Jackets are represented by a hornet or bee named Stinger. What do hornets have to do with Blue Jackets? Or stinging with ice hockey? I guess I can't fault them too much though, as the Twins' mascot is a bear, which also has nothing to do with twins or baseball.

And, of course, there are baseball's two most famous mascots, the Sand Diego Padre's Famous Chicken and the Philadelphia Phillies' Phanatic. Are they famous because they're the best mascots ever, or are they infamous for being really ridiculous? Meh, it really doesn't really matter. Just watch the Phanatic ruin a cotton candy hawker's night: