MASCOT FIGHTS: Take the UMass Minutemen over Notre Dame (and 5 other Week 4 picks)

There are a lot of ways to decide how to bet on college football. You could go read our good friend Bud Elliott, who is often right. You could go watch our good friend Dan Rubenstein, who is literally almost always wrong.

However, there is only one surefire way to ensure you’re making the smartest, safest wagers. Imagining which mascot would win in a life-or-death battle between the mascots of the two colleges playing football.

As an expert in Mascot Fights, I’ve been commissioned by SB Nation to pick the games of the week by imagining the horrible things that would happen if each game was decided by mascots fighting each other. We’ll be keeping track of my record against the spread.

(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.)

A lot of teams name themselves after wildcats as if it is a big ol’ ferocious cat, like a lion or a cougar or a panther or a jaguar or a puma. The problem is a wildcat is, well, it’s basically just a wild cat:

The wildcat is this close to being the star of memes about hating things, or comic strips about Mondays being bad.

The bruin is a freakin’ bear. Sorry, kitty, this is a blowout.

Pick: UCLA

Syracuse is represented by an anthropomorphic orange. LSU is represented by A FREAKING TIGER. Tigers are good at eating things. Oranges are good at being eaten. I couldn’t find any pictures of tigers eating oranges, but here is an artist’s representation of this mascot.

Note: I am the artist.

Pick: LSU

Humans have been killing ducks for so long that we’ve had time to spend hundreds of dog generations breeding better dogs to help us kill ducks. Meanwhile, the duck has pretty much no way of killing humans. RIP “Puddles.”

Pick: Utah

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish logo is a tiny little man trying to punch somebody with his tiny little fists. Well, bad news for the tiny guy: the Minuteman is also good at fighting, but he also has a gun. Is it a good gun? No, it’s a shoddy 1700s gun that can only fire like once a minute. But it’s a gun, and can also be used as a whacking device if necessary.

The Minutemen beat the English, who held dominion over Ireland for several centuries, so they’ve already got a transitive property win on the schedule.

Pick: UMass

You can volunteer for whatever you want; that gator isn’t going to think any more highly of you while it rips your stupid human body into itty bitty little pieces. It doesn’t care about your time in the peace corps. It just cares about being a prehistoric murder monster.

Pick: Florida

Easily the matchup of the day.

I really couldn’t decide who would win this: the small, but scrappy wolverine, or the larger, more formidable cougar. Luckily, people yell at each other on Yahoo! Answers about literally everything in the world:

There you have it, folks: Jim Harbaugh’s squad has the tenacity to fend off cougars. That said, BYU has earned itself a reputation for winning on all-or-nothing last second attacks. Perhaps that sheer force can eliminate the wolverine.

Pick: Michigan