Athlon ranks Syracuse’s Otto the Orange eighth-best mascot in ACC

Athlon Sports has been pulling together plenty of peak offseason content of late, and one of the most recent ventures was a list ranking the top mascots in the ACC (hey, we’re in that conference!).

The Syracuse Orange’s Otto the Orange ranks eighth on the list out of 15 (they included Notre Dame). This is where you get understandably irate about the results of these subjective, meaningless rankings.

Given the fact that I spent an extensive amount of time with the ACC mascots this past March in New York, I bring an expert perspective to this conversation, and loudly refute the list as it currently stands.

Athlon lists mascots for Virginia, North Carolina, Notre Dame, Louisville, Boston College, Miami and Duke all ahead of Otto -- which is laughable. Not to say that Otto’s No. 1 for certain (just in our hearts). But it’s very difficult to see Cavman, Baldwin and especially the Leprechaun as “better” than Otto.

If we wanted to take the lead on re-ranking, it probably looks something like this:

1. Otto the Orange (Syracuse)
2. Ramses (North Carolina)
3. Sebastian (Miami)
4. Cardinal Bird (Louisville)
5. Blue Devil (Duke)
6. Baldwin (Boston College)
7. Hokiebird (Virginia Tech)
8. Demon Deacon (Wake Forest)
9. Mr. Wuf (NC State)
10. Leprechaun (Notre Dame)
11. Buzz (Georgia Tech)
12. Cavman (Virginia)
13. Cimarron (Florida State)
14. The Tiger/Eight Ball (Clemson)
15. Roc (Pittsburgh)

I’d probably be fine with any of the top four being named No. 1, then Duke leads off a strong second tier that goes down to the Leprechaun at 10th. Cimarron looks interesting and all, but he’s not utilized enough to register higher. You also have to actively remove the Tiger from Eight Ball’s personality to properly judge.

But am I just being a homer? Is Athlon’s list really that bad? Should Otto be higher, even if not No. 1? Share your own (likely biased) thoughts below.