This past Saturday, Ole Miss pulled back the curtain on its new on-field mascot: a landshark. Twitter promptly lost its mind over the muscled-up shark with its toothy grin and swept-back dorsal fin. Angry Rebel fans bashed the costume design. Media members chortled. Opposing fans gleefully posted memes. More than anything, people wondered why the hell a school in north Mississippi picked a shark as its mascot.
Roughly a dozen species are found in the warm waters off the Mississippi Gulf Coast, but the state has no significant historical association with sharks. On the surface, about the closest tie-in you can find is the Pascagoula native Jimmy Buffet’s Landshark Lager.