Here’s How the Northland Reacted to UMD’s New Bulldog Mascot
The University of Minnesota Duluth shared its new design for its official Bulldog mascot named Champ, and the reaction from the public has been trending in one clear direction, negative.
The new look was revealed on the UMD Athletics social media channels yesterday using the previous look of a grey-colored bulldog instantly transforming into the new 'Winnie The Pooh yellow' bulldog mascot.
After the video was shared, comments quickly began to pile up, mostly negative. With one Twitter user saying, "April Fool's was 5 months ago..." and another saying "I’m generally pretty open to change but I cannot get behind this one."
Honestly, looking through the majority of comments I couldn't find more than 5 positive comments out of hundreds of negative comments. The Duluth News Tribune said it reached out and a "UMD media contact did not immediately respond to the News Tribune's request for comment on the new suit." I'm sure they are trying to figure out a way to spin this in a positive direction, but I feel this new mascot will be a hard one to sell to the public.
The University of Minnesota Duluth just recently announced its new Director of Athletics, Forrest Karr started the job just a couple of weeks ago, so I suspect this move was in action long before he arrived unless that is just a stock/generic bulldog costume they bought on eBay versus a custom made one. Needless to say, much of the blame is landing on him.
Twitter user Ben Drilling said, "Sounds like the classic example of "hey I'm new to this position of authority and I need to change things so ppl know I'm doing something"
It will certainly be interesting to see how the University handles this situation, my guess is that they will have to just deal with the negative feedback and hope that people eventually embrace the new look as I'm sure a lot of money was poured into this mascot rebranding.