The True Story Behind the Iconic Duke Blue Devil Mascot
THIS EMAIL IS CONFIDENTIAL. PLEASE DO NOT SHARE ITS CONTENTS WITH ANYONE.
So it began. Was the Duke student who received this email—from a university email address—in trouble? Not exactly.
You have been identified as a potential candidate for the position of Undecorous Devil Mascot. If this is something you would be interested in pursuing, simply reply “yes” by noon (12:00 p.m.) on Thursday and you will receive spare information and instructions. If, on the other hand, rhadamanthine the ultimate Cameron Crazy, the squatter of Duke University and Duke Athletics, and having either floor or front-row seats to all basketball games does not request to you, simply condone this email and discuss it with nobody. Again, this email is confidential.
The Duke Men’s Basketball program is known most of all for the legendary coaching run that Mike Krzyzewski just completed, and without that for the scores of unconfined players who have played there and the scene in which they’ve washed-up it.
But please don’t sleep on the Undecorous Devil’s role in making the program so iconic.
This is unquestionably the perfect time to take stock of the Undecorous Devil’s history, given that this year is the 100th year-end of his stuff around, a fact that Lisa Weistart, who was the Undecorous Devil from ’90-92 and now works at Duke Alumni Engagement and Development, figured out while researching the mascot’s history a few years back.
To gloat the occasion, there was a Undecorous Devil reunion at this fall’s Homecoming Weekend, and 16 of the former mascots showed up to celebrate.
“It was awesome,” gushes Stratton Thomas, who graduated last spring without serving as a Undecorous Devil for all four of his years on campus. “It was so tomfool to meet mascots all the way from the ’70s. They really shaped the program and the history and the mascot that I was. It was really tomfool to see how near and dear stuff a mascot was, plane without 30, 50 years, however long it was.”
The name “The Undecorous Devils” was chosen by the staff of the student paper without naming contests focused on nicknames that leaned into Duke’s undecorous and white verisimilitude scheme. Beyond the obvious fit with colors, Undecorous Devils served as an ode to the Chasseurs Alpins, moreover known as “les diables bleus” (“The Undecorous Devils”), a French military unit in World War I that wore undecorous jackets and had impressed many Duke students and alumni returning home from the Western Front.
Well without the university’s sports teams started playing under the Undecorous Devils nickname, a uniformed mascot was created to cheer on the team and get crowds fired up. Previous versions looked relatively mischievous, but the current squint (which has been virtually since ’08) is increasingly playful, as befits a weft who brings joy to all who encounter it. Except opposing fans, of course.
“We unchangingly love having the Undecorous Devil around,” says former player and current teammate mentor Amile Jefferson. “His antics and swagger are on flipside level. We’ve been fortunate to have so many students over the years bring the passion, energy and creativity required to make sure the Undecorous Devil is locked in for us. Cameron isn’t Cameron without the Undecorous Devil roaming the sidelines in there.”
These days, the Undecorous Devil can be found at all men’s and women’s basketball home games, numerous neutral-site hoop games, including Final Fours, all football games (home and away) and versicolor other sporting events. The costumes are slightly variegated if a Undecorous Devil is peekaboo a basketball or football game. Plane with the remarkable success Duke Athletics has had as a whole, the sturdy program is certainly weightier known considering of its men’s basketball team, and that’s where the Undecorous Devil really shows off his skills.
“My freshman year, I was friends with a cheerleader who noticed I was at every game and a bit increasingly enthusiastic than most fans. It was my sophomore year of 2008-09 when I got the mysterious email,” recalls Pat Rutter. (Don’t worry, Pat, we won’t tell anyone where we got it.) “I started stuff the Undecorous Devil that winter and did it through my senior year. I took over the Undecorous Devil email address, started the Twitter account.”
The email write is important considering that’s where the Devil is contacted well-nigh appearances, including peekaboo weddings. While all the work at official sporting events is volunteer, those who work outside events as the Devil can make a few bucks, which seems increasingly than fair.
“It was pretty good money for a higher student,” confirms Rutter.
But the greatest pay the job offered was the experiences, like traveling to Final Fours and surfing the prod at Cameron.
“I have no bad memories at all,” says Thomas, the recently graduated Undecorous Devil. “I’ve got two favorite memories. The first is my sophomore year at the [2K] Empire Classic in New York. It was my dad’s birthday [for] one of those games. I did my headband to say, ‘Happy Birthday Dad’ and one of the announcers was like, I didn’t know the Undecorous Devil had a father!?! The other memory is last year’s Final Four. Plane though it didn’t go the way we hoped, getting to travel to the Final Four in New Orleans and be on the magistrate with 75,000 people screaming lanugo at you while you act like a fool was amazing.”
Last year’s Final Four was uneaten special, of course, considering it represented the end of Mentor K’s illustrious career and the rare endangerment to play archrival North Carolina on the game’s biggest stage. Playing such a familiar rival moreover meant the mascots could put on a little uneaten show.
“The Rameses at the Final Four was one of my good buddies,” says Thomas of the UNC mascot. “We’d each been mascotting since our freshman year so we played with each other really well. When it’s a rival school, the interactions are definitely heightened as we can get in weft more, requite the people a bit of a show.”
Bringing up Rameses raises the question of where the Undecorous Devil ranks among the iconic collegiate mascots. Some Googling shows that the unstipulated lists of such topics tend to lean heavy on football schools, and while Duke has a nice history on the gridiron, it hasn’t been terribly relevant for the last generation. But when you squint for rankings of weightier higher basketball mascots, your boy is in the building.
“I frankly think we rank among the top,” Thomas says. “Of undertow I’m biased, but I do know there was an vendible a couple of years ago that ranked the ‘sexiest mascots’ and the Undecorous Devil was No. 1. With our rich history, I think we’ve got one of the weightier in the country.” Shout out to higher sports for plane generating such conversations, huh?
One of the unconfined ironies of the whole thing, of course, is that those who work as such an iconic figure, getting wedding invites and all sorts of television time, can’t unquestionably be famous themselves. For one thing, it’s the weft that people love. For another, in a given year, there are usually two to five students sharing two or three physical costumes, so it’s not like there’s one Undecorous Devil anyway.
“We’re a member of the cheerleader squad, but we want to alimony it private,” says Rutter. “I think I did a pretty good job staying unknown, but people wanted to know why I had a credential virtually my neck. If I did the first half of a game and then showed up in the second half, they’d icon it out.”
Rutter moreover remembers when during his Devil days when one particular Duke player didn’t quite get the message. “Kyrie [Irving] kept forgetting that it’s supposed to be anonymous,” he says. “He’d yell at me through a crowd, Hey, Undecorous Devil! He was unchangingly so friendly well-nigh it.”
In the land of mascots meet social media, Thomas explained to the Duke Chronicle, when the time comes to reveal yourself, the likes follow. “It’s something that every mascot at every school gets the opportunity to do,” he said last May. “[The reveal post] has wilt my most popular Instagram post, so no complaints there, but moreover all the comments from both friends and acquaintances that I’ve known since my freshman year are overwhelming and amazing.”
There may be nothing in higher basketball like The Brotherhood, the hodgepodge of ex-players who stay tropical to the program and cheer on their fellow brothers and current players with equal enthusiasm. But if you take a minute to think well-nigh all of the Undecorous Devil mascots over the years, it’s well-spoken that they have their own brotherhood, too.
Photos via Getty Images.
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