MASCOT FIGHTS: West Virginia’s Mountaineer is going to make a rug out of Baylor’s Bear (and 6 other Week 7 picks)

Hey guys, time for mascot fights again. Last week we went 4-3 to move to 15-6 against the spread, proving beyond a doubt that me looking at animals and deciding which would win in a fight is a legitimate way of gambling on sports and something you should read every week.

Or maybe not. Who knows. Maybe my success thus far picking college football games based on animal duels has to do more with luck than the innate nature of whether a school has a strong, good-at-fighting mascot. I guess I’m going to keep doing it, though.

(Disclaimer: SB Nation does not endorse mascots or animals fighting to the death. I bet you thought this would be a disclaimer about how we don’t endorse gambling. Nah, we’re fine with that. But the mascot death is only hypothetical.)

All times ET

The name “Hawkeye” stems back to the 1800’s. It comes from either the Sauk chief Black Hawk, who fought to defend Native lands in the upper Midwest and whose name lives on through a hockey team and a helicopter, or a character in “The Last of the Mohicans.”

Either way, Iowa doesn’t use one of those as its mascot. It uses a hawk, and its logo is a hawk’s head. So we’re going to have to assume the “hawkeye” refers to the actual disembodied eye of a hawk. Which probably isn’t very good at fighting.

Against a full hawk? The wildcat is in trouble. It’s just a little cat that lives outdoors. Against just the disembodied eye of a hawk? I’m picking the cat.

PICK: NORTHWESTERN WILDCATS

So we’ve got a Crimson Tide, whatever that is, facing off against an Aggie, whatever that is, and ... hold on just a second.

Hey, Spencer? I just can’t do this anymore.

Can’t do what?

The mascot picks. It’s just SO DUMB. Like, I’m telling people to make picks based on a Crimson Tide facing an Aggie. Am I using the elephant? Am I using a red ocean? Is an aggie just a guy who likes agriculture a bunch? Am I using Miss Rev? Why are we even doing this? What service does this provide to anybody, anywhere?

Rodger, listen. In each of past three weeks, I have invested my life’s worth in your mascot picks. In the past three weeks, I have become the richest man in the state of Georgia. Here I am, sitting in a brand new drop-top Lamborghini Aventador. Please go back to work. Me and the Lambo are about to go through a tunnel.*

*SB Nation editorial director Spencer Hall did not say any of this

I think it is pretty obvious that a Crimson Tide would pull an Aggie away to sea, and I also think an elephant would beat Miss Rev in a fight.

Pick: ALABAMA CRIMSON TIDE

If the Trojan War were fought between a bunch of horse-riding Trojan military men with a sword and armor and an army of small, bare-knuckle brawlers wearing fun green hats, Paris and Helen would’ve lived happily ever after.

Pick: USC TROJANS

The wolverine is pretty vicious, especially for an animal of its size, but the Spartan is a strong human with spears and shields and swords and stuff.

Pick: MICHIGAN STATE SPARTANS

This right here is our UPSET OF THE WEEK.

Hey, remember that time this mascot matchup actually happened? When West Virginia’s mascot actually went outside with his mascot uniform and his school-supplied mascot gun and murdered a bear? This is what West Virginia Mountaineers do. They go into the woods and see animals and come back with food, clothing and decorations.

The Mountaineer’s original outfit used to include a bearskin cape, although he has since changed to buckskin.

Pick: WEST VIRGINIA MOUNTAINEERS

Cool, this is an interesting matchup between two forest creatures! Neat! Love forest creatures! Just gonna go ahead and Google “cougar vs. beaver” to see if there are any videos of a cougar fighting a beaver and -- wow! Sure are all sorts of videos of cougars interacting with beavers! Let’s just check these out here, and

well

uh

Those

well

aren’t

uhhhh

I guess a cougar would probably win they have claws and sharp teeth, and beavers kinda just have silly tails.

Pick: WASHINGTON STATE COUGARS

I literally just did this last week.

A thing you quickly learn when your job is “picking mascot fights” is that sometimes if you google “(NAME OF ANIMAL) vs. (NAME OF ANIMAL),” you find numerous actual videos of those two animals fighting to the death. They’re very disturbing, and this is one of those cases! Anyway, I watch them so you don’t have to. Although there are no videos of alligators fighting tigers, since their ranges don’t intersect, there are instances of tigers fighting crocodiles. I will assume gator vs. tiger would end the same way.

The gator really has one shot at defeating the tiger: It’s gotta be hidden in the water, and make a sneak attack so damaging that the tiger can’t recover. If it can’t, the tiger is more mobile, faster and aside from the gator’s intense bite strength, stronger. The tiger will outmaneuver the gator, avoiding any potentially devastating injuries, and eventually work its way to the gator’s soft, defenseless underbelly.

Of course, I was wrong last week. Florida covered the spread and then some. But I think my dominant overall record proves that’s a fluke.

Pick: LSU TIGERS