It was your typical college football game. Murray State was losing 41-3 to Kentucky and the game was going along as normal. It wasn’t until around 7:37 in the fourth quarter that all of a sudden, a horse costume that seemed to be occupied by two people trotted around the field with the Kentucky Wildcat.
“That’s the Kentucky Wildcat, and that is the Murray State Racers,” Mike Morgan said.
The statement from ESPN’s SEC Network play-by-play analyst sent twitter into a frenzy. Multiple people began tweeting about Murray State’s alleged mascot. Matt Jones of Kentucky Sports Radio posted the video on Twitter saying, “Can we talk about this Murray State mascot?” and the video would go on to get over 122,000 views.
This would lead to posts by Barstool Sports, a short ESPN Snapchat clip, spectators and many angry Murray State alumni trying to get the point across that it wasn’t the official mascot. Murray State’s Sports Twitter page would eventually respond and clear the air on the misconstrued mascot, and bring justice to Dunker’s name.
Guy Ramsey, director of strategic communication at Kentucky released a statement identifying the students behind the costume.
“Our mascots, who are part of our cheerleading program, had the idea to dress up as what was supposed to be a plainly fake horse mascot for our game vs. Murray State,” Ramsey said. “They came up with the concept and executed it on their own, all in a good-natured effort to have fun and engage our fans.”