Tuesday Top Ten: Favorite Mascots Remaining in Championship Week

As of the time I'm writing this, there are still 194 schools that are playing or have yet to play in the remaining conference tournaments in this year's edition of Championship Week.  Many of the remaining schools have common or boring mascots, like Wildcats, Bulldogs, Eagles, and Tigers.  Others, however, have unique, hilarious, or otherwise awesome nicknames that should be celebrated, even if the school is not likely to see the good side of March for years to come.

Here are my ten favorite mascots from the teams remaining in Championship Week (in alphabetical order), along with their conference, conference tournament seed, and their next game (all times Eastern), in case you want to follow them:

1.  Coastal Carolina Chanticleers
-Sun Belt 8-seed; first round, 3/7 12:30 p.m.
You know I'm a huge fan of Rock-a-Doodle, so this one's a no-brainer.

2.  Idaho Vandals
-Big Sky 2-seed; quarterfinals, 3/8 8:35 p.m.
"We're gonna come into your city and sack that shit."  That should be the opening line of the Idaho fight song.

3.  Mississippi Valley State Delta Devils
-SWAC 8-seed; quarterfinals, 3/6 8:30 p.m.
Whenever I see the Delta Devils, I think to myself, Is that the same devil that made the deal with Robert Johnson at the crossroads, lo those many years ago?  If so, that's pretty badass.

4.  Louisiana-Lafayette Ragin' Cajuns
-Sun Belt 1-seed, quarterfinals, 3/9 12:30 p.m.
This has long been one of my favorite mascots.  I even bought a t-shirt back in the '90s from the Eastbay catalog.  Back then, it was called Southwestern Louisiana.  That, combined with the Ragin' Cajuns mascot, made me assume this was a school on the bayou, where students had to avoid gators as they made their way to class each day via fan boat.

5.  Missouri-Kansas City Kangaroos
-WAC 6-seed; quarterfinals, 3/8 3 p.m.
You think you're gonna jump higher or more often than we will?  We're kangaroos, motherfucker.

6.  New Orleans Privateers
-Southland 5-seed; first round, 3/7 6 p.m.
A privateer is kind of a pirate for hire, and I am just going to assume this was named after Jean Lafitte, famous New Orleans privateer after whom Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop -- my favorite bar in New Orleans -- is named.

7.  South Dakota State Jackrabbits
-Summit League 1-seed; finals, 3/6 9 p.m.
If this were a Division II contest, I'd go with the South Dakota Mines Hardrockers (I also had purchased one of their shirts from Eastbay back in the day), but SDM has not yet made the jump to D-1, so why not go with a mascot from the same state that evokes thoughts of mindless, constant banging?

8.  Texas Rio Grande Valley Vaqueros
-WAC 5-seed, quarterfinals, 3/8 11:30 p.m.
It's a more creative name than "cowboys."  It would be even better if their warm-up pants were blue jeans -- better known in Spanish as pantalones vaqueros.

9.  UC Irvine Anteaters
-Big West 3-seed; quarterfinals, 3/8 5:30 p.m.
Is there anything more intimidating than an animal that eats ants?!  I don't think so.

10.  UC Santa Barbara Gauchos
-Big West 2-seed; quarterfinals, 3/8 3 p.m.
A lot of people don't realize that before Santa Barbara was located in southern California, it was on the pampas of Argentina.