What The New Blue Devil Costume Could Have Prevented

From today's Chronicle:

When he strode off the court after yet another heartbreaker in the NCAA Tournament, he vowed to return a changed man.

He spent the offseason pumping iron and rethinking the way he does business on the court. He returned in the Fall with heightened muscle tone and focus.

The Cameron Crazies would be thrilled to see such a transformation in any basketball player. But when the changed man is the Blue Devil himself-well, it's a different story.

When students filled Wallace Wade Stadium for the first football game of the season in August, they were in for a few surprises. The so-called dawn of a new day on the field was met with a redesigned mascot to match, but not all students have embraced the new mascot with the fervor with which they accepted David Cutcliffe's first season.

Whereas the change may not be entirely popular with students yet, it has been readily accepted by the mascots. No longer held together "with some paperclips, some wire and an old hard hat," the new costume is safer and more aerodynamic—and if it had been in place last year, it could have prevented the torn ACL you can watch above.

"Even in situations when you were falling, your first thought wasn't to break your fall but to keep the head from falling off," one student mascot said. "It was someone who was new.... He went to hold his head, instead of breaking his fall, and he tore his ACL."