OXFORD, Mississippi — In a burst of fog and confetti blasting from all sides, the figure sauntered onto the stage. For a moment he just looked like a football player in full pads, number 47 printed in white on his red jersey, muscular arms flexing and pointing. Then the shark head cleared the pillar of smoke.
A permanent toothy grin spread across Tony the Landshark’s face as he bounced along to the music — landsharks, the crowd learned, can dance as well as any landlocked creature. His rubbery head nodded along, a fin protruding from the back of it.
Then the lights came up on Tony, named and numbered after former Rebels linebacker Tony Fein, who coined the ‘fins up’ hand gesture a decade ago. The landshark hopped off the stage and opened his arms wide. The small children seated in the front rows jumped up and engulfed him.
Ole Miss unveiled its new on-field Landshark mascot Saturday at Meet the Rebels Day in the Manning Center. It was the culmination of a process that started in earnest when the Ole Miss Associated Student Body announced in September that it was going to conduct a poll testing the potential support behind changing the Rebels' mascot from Rebel the Black Bear to a landshark. Less than 11 months later, Ole Miss has met its before-the-2018-season deadline to introduce the Landshark in flesh and blood.
“It doesn’t look like a typical mascot,” Ole Miss cheer coach and mascot coordinator Ryan O’Connor said. “It’s not a foam head with fake fur all over it. It looks, and I imagine feels, like what a shark feels like.”
The creative process became the responsibility of Micah Ginn, associate athletic director for sports production and creative services, and his team after Chancellor Jeffery Vitter announced the Landshark would become Ole Miss’ next mascot last fall. That ended Rebel’s tenure after just a seven-year career. The first step was to assemble a Landshark launch committee made up of leaders from the student body, spirit squad, sports administration and marketing team. The ‘fins up’ gesture had been around since 2008, and spread across sports teams, but the committee still had a question to answer: what does a landshark actually look like?
“It was excitement,” Ginn said of the feeling in the room. “It was tons of ideas going back and forth, and concept art, and it almost was an advantage that this is a fictional creature because the sky’s the limit. You’re not bound by really any rules of what a shark, or a bear, or an eagle, or anything looks like. You’re coming up with something that’s your own.”
Once the Landshark launch committee had settled on initial sketches, it turned to a Hattiesburg-based design company to push the process forward. According to its website, RARE Design has worked with numerous professional sports teams, including the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets, Atlanta Hawks, Sacramento Kings and Minnesota Timberwolves. That work with NBA teams was what caught Ole Miss’ attention, Ginn told the Clarion Ledger.
RARE Design took the lead on developing logos and new branding and refining the mascot design for the Rebels. But when it came to the creation of the actual costume, RARE connected Ole Miss with Nascent Perspective Studios and Jessee Clarkson. Clarkson has worked in the art departments of movies including Iron Man, Watchmen, and Aliens vs. Predator.
“The idea of, ‘Look through the catalog, oh let’s pick that shark,’ that wasn’t going to work,” Ginn said. “We wanted this to be a landshark that had never been seen before, a character who had never been seen before, and put a whole lot of detail and thought and intentionality into the design of the Landshark.”
An Ole Miss spokesperson told the Clarion Ledger the whole venture, including branding, a new website, costume design and multiple costumes, cost somewhere between $50,000 to 75,000. It was privately funded by the Ole Miss Athletics Foundation.
The Landshark launch committee wanted the mascot to strike a balance between being intimidating but also not scaring young children.
Ginn described Clarkson tinkering with the number of teeth in the mask—too few and it looked goofy, too many and it was terrifying—and studying pictures of Santa Clause to determine what wrinkle patterns around the eyes would make it look the right amount of friendly.
The result was a chameleon-like quality of blending into the context. When he’s bearing down on a crowd with red lights flashing behind him, Tony looks like something straight out of a nightmare. When he kneels down to take a picture with a two-year old wearing a large blue bow on her head, he’s practically hug-able. After Tony's grand entrance Saturday, one small child sniffled as if she wasn’t sure if she should cry or not. But the majority bounded up to the shark-man without hesitation.
One of the first things the Landshark launch committee decided on was the Landshark's personality. O’Connor has worked, and will continue to work, with the mascot performers on implementing that demeanor and walk.
“We have to have a walk that showcases him as kind of an athletic jock,” O’Connor said. “There’s a way that athletes walk through campus, so we kind of played off that kind of walk.”
They’ve already received appearance requests, O’Connor said, and she’s come up with ideas for some game-day stunts.
But on Saturday most of Tony’s duties consisted of taking pictures with fans. A line quickly formed leading up to the new mascot, stretching halfway across the width of the indoor field. He took turns posing with everyone from a pair of young boys holding N.W.O. belts, to grown men in Ole Miss polo shirts, to cheerleaders. And so the era of the Landshark mascot officially began.
