Unusual Jobs: Team Mascot

Sunday, January 13, 2008

By Charley Hannagan

Staff writer

As careers go, Nick Natario has picked a doozy. If all goes well, in the fall he'll be a bluetick

coonhound, a gopher or a Spartan. Ultimately, he'd liked to be a buffalo. Natario, 22, wants to be a professional mascot. He's one of five people who play Otto the Orange, the mascot for Syracuse University.

His career aspirations may sound childish to some, but according to people in the industry, professional mascots at the top of their game earn $100,000 a year. For that salary, they build a mascot brand for their employers selling T-shirts and dolls and represent the team in hundreds of appearances at sporting events, birthday and corporate parties and fundraisers. Natario said he sees the mascot not only as a job but as a way to a career in sports marketing. "I'm not going to be able to mascot for the rest of my life. That's why you have the front-office job with marketing and PR (public relations), so that when you're done with mascoting, you can stay with the team or move to a different organization," he said. If you passed Natario on his way to broadcast journalism classes on SU's campus, you wouldn't know he's Otto.

Otto is a furry orange with blue eyes, a big smile, white cartoon hands and a dark blue Syracuse ball cap.

At 5 foot 10 inches tall with short brown hair and blue eyes, dressed in jeans, a sweater and well-worn New Balance sneakers, Natario looks like Joe College. You'll never see Natario become Otto. That's because he doesn't want people to think of Nick when they see the mascot. In keeping with his policy, he would not allow The Post-Standard to photograph him becoming the character.

Natario had some mascot experience. As a teenager, he played the Looney Tunes cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn for a summer job at Six Flags New England. But, he didn't set out from his home in Belchertown, Mass., with playing Otto as his goal. As a season ticket holder his freshman year, he saw Otto at the games and thought the character was cool. Then Natario saw an ad in the Daily Orange for Otto tryouts, and his resident assistant in the dorm encouraged him to go. Natario did and was one of two people picked for the job out of the 20 who tried out. He's been an Otto ever since. Being a mascot is more than acting goofy. It's very athletic, although it includes pulling pranks and designing skits to entertain the crowd. Natario works with a trainer and attends cheerleader gymnastic practices. He attends mascot training camps and takes part in competitions. This week, Otto heads to Walt Disney World, in Orlando, Fla., where he'll compete in the 2008 College Cheerleading and Dance Team National Championships. If Otto wins, the team will get a trophy and banner, and the players will get championship rings, Natario said.

Natario has twice played Otto in Capitol One mascot commercials. Two years ago, while filming a commercial, Natario met the back-up mascot for the San Antonio Spurs. He suggested Natario turn pro. "I had never considered it before. I was doing an internship at a TV station, and I really wanted to go into broadcast," Natario said. He thought about it, and a couple of weeks later talked with an instructor at mascot camp about how to get into the profession and what it paid. "And then I decided right before my junior year I wanted to become a professional mascot," Natario said. In the summer, he built his resume by playing Scooch, the mascot for the Syracuse Chiefs, and filmed another round of Capitol One commercials, for which he was paid $50 a day and for which the Otto program received $5,000.

He interviewed with the Pittsburgh Pirates for a job as mascot coordinator and assistant to the director of broadcasting. The Pirates appeared interested, asking if he'd leave school early to take the job or consider transferring to the University of Pittsburgh to finish his senior year while working for the ball club. Natario declined. "They said, you could go to the University of Pittsburgh. I said, no, I'm not going to Pitt. If this were the Boston Red Sox, it might be a different story," he said.

His family and friends sometimes tease him about becoming a professional mascot, Natario said. "I think when I first told them last year, they were like, 'Oh, it's a fad,' and now that I'm still talking about it four or five months from graduation, I think they're concerned," Natario said. While his father has been supportive, "My mom and my mom's family have been giving me a really hard time. When I went home for Thanksgiving, they were like, 'OK enough of the mascot talk. How's the job search for a reporter going?' "

Natario said he believes he can make more money as a mascot than he can in broadcast journalism. That's true for some mascots in Major League Baseball or the National Basketball Association who earn $100,000 a year, said Wayde Harrison of Acme Mascots, in Brooklyn, and David Raymond of Raymond Entertainment, in Delaware. Both organizations develop mascots for sports teams and other organizations.

"Most of the time, you're not going to be able to make it as a full-time performer right off the bat," Raymond said. The challenge for mascots is that they must make money for the organization. "There are positions available when you develop revenue for your team," Raymond said. Raymond, who is the emperor of fun and games in his organization, was the original Phillie Phanatic the green mascot for the Philadelphia Phillies baseball team. The Phanatic wooed tough fans who had a reputation for booing Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Raymond's company creates mascots for organizations, finds performers and trains them. The company is working with the Cleveland Indians to find a replacement for the performer who plays Slider, the team's mascot. The performer is moving into the marketing offices, Raymond said.

Harrison and Raymond said mascots should have the same skills as trained actors. "They should create a character, maintain a character, develop a character, not to mention the physical attributes. It's a physical job wearing a heavy costume," Harrison said. He doesn't believe that the mascot industry is growing. There are only so many sports teams in the nation and not all want a mascot, he said.

However, Raymond said he believes the industry has grown over the past 15 years and will continue to expand to include mascots who entertain at corporate events or teach training sessions at companies. Colleges also are paying more attention to their mascots and the revenues they bring in, treating them much the same as their athletes with partial or even full scholarships, Raymond said.

Natario's on track to graduate in the spring with a degree in broadcast journalism. He will audition in May for the part of Blaze, the mascot of the WNBA's Connecticut Sun. If he doesn't get a job, he plans to choose a graduate program where he can build his mascot resume. He'd like to play Sparty the Spartan, Michigan State University's mascot. If that doesn't work out, he would like to play Goldy the Gopher at the University of Minnesota or Smokey the bluetick coonhound at the University of Tennessee. "My favorite mascot in the world is Michigan State Sparty. Every time I talk on the phone to the guy that plays him, I get all excited," he said. Sparty comes with a full scholarship. "I have no idea what Michigan State looks like. I don't know what the program is like, but I know what the mascot is," Natario said. From there, Natario is shooting for his dream job. Even though his hometown lies in the heart of New England Patriot country, he'd like to play Billy the Buffalo for the Buffalo Bills.

 You can contact Charley Hannagan at 470-2161 or channagan@syracuse.com