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Big Red (Western Kentucky University)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Big Red is the name given to Western Kentucky University's mascot, a red, furry, amorphous blob created by WKU student Ralph Carey in 1979. Big Red is meant to symbolize WKU's sports teams' nickname, the "Hilltoppers", a name chosen because the campus of the school is situated atop a hill that rises 232 feet (71 m) above the Barren River that flows through WKU's home city of Bowling Green.[1]
Big Red was an immediate hit, winning the "Key to the Spirit" award at the Universal Cheerleading Association competition in 1980, 1981 and 1983. In 1996, he reached the Final Four of ESPN's "Battle of the Mascots". He was also featured prominently in the promotion for ESPN's 25,000th episode of SportsCenter.[2]
Big Red reached the semifinals of the 2006 Capital One Mascot Challenge.[3]
Big Red found himself in the center of an international controversy in 2004 when the university filed suit against Mediaset, a television station controlled by Italy's former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. The suit claimed that Gabibbo, a mascot for some of the network's programs (ie: "Striscia la Notizia" and "Paperissima Sprint"), was an exact replica of Big Red. Gabibbo debuted in 1990, eleven years after Big Red, and Gabibbo's creator, Antonio Ricci, admitted to Italian magazine Novella 2000 in 1991 that "Big Red became Gabibbo." In a later interview with The New York Times Ricci recanted the 1991 confession, saying he was only joking with the magazine.[4]