The secret life of Alabama and Clemson mascots
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Jordan and Dakota can't tell you their last names.
It's part of The Code, and breaking it would be like spitting in the face of decades of tradition. There's a chance they'd lose their positions if they did.
But rest assured, you know who they are.
You see them -- kind of -- at every Alabama and Clemson football game.
Jordan and Dakota, you see, are mascots.
Dakota becomes a lumbering, goofy elephant known as Big Al on game days. Meanwhile, Jordan transforms into a high-energy, back-flipping, yellow-eyed Tiger.
On Thursday morning, both were making preparations to travel to the College Football National Championship Game Presented by AT&T in Tampa, Florida (8 p.m. ET, ESPN).
Jordan employed a water-and-vodka mixture to clean his costume, scrubbing out the odor of a week in Arizona for the semifinal game.
Dakota won't get to fly to the game with the football team, so he was busy packing for a 10.5-hour bus ride set to leave Tuscaloosa around 7 p.m. the following day. The title game will be his 120th appearance as Big Al since May.
While it may look like fun and games for these college mascots, there's a lot more to it.
Jordan is a bundle of energy.
Performing is what he has done his entire life. His younger brother nicknamed him "Extra" because he always goes above and beyond, making things bigger, louder and more entertaining.
Running down the hill as Clemson's mascot wasn't enough. So he taught himself to do a backflip on the incline, and now he does it before every game.
Jordan began taking dance classes at 6, following in the footsteps of his parents. He was teased incessantly in middle school for dancing, but Jordan kept at it through high school, when he began thinking of his future.
When it came time to graduate, he had two choices: pursue a career in dancing or go to college.
His parents pushed him toward an education, and he applied to one school.
Clemson was the only choice. His mother went to school there, and he first attended a Tigers football game at 2 years old. Jordan said his family has been season-ticket holders through the good times and the bad. There are pictures all throughout their home of them at games, including one of a 3-year-old Jordan in front of the scoreboard wearing the Tiger outfit, complete with a tail.
Trying out to become the mascot was an easy decision. Even his parents weren't surprised.
But Jordan's aspirations -- "I wanted to take the mascot to a new level," he said -- would raise more than a few eyebrows.
The backflip was one that caught people's attention. For his next trick, Jordan said he's working with a trainer to learn how to dunk off a trampoline during basketball games.
His favorite ploy, however, was when he decided to take the Tiger on water to wakeboard.
His parents were freaked out. No problem, he told them.
"I'll have a life vest on and the wakeboard is also a flotation device. I'll be fine."
When Jordan hit the water, he immediately thought, "Oh my gosh, what did I just do?"
The suit went from about eight pounds to feeling like 100. The headset fogged up and he couldn't see anything. He stayed on the board, held onto the rope for dear life and pulled it off.
When it was over, he said he had to be helped back onto the boat because the suit was too heavy.
"Y'all better have gotten a good video!" he shouted at his parents and everyone on board. "We're not going to be able to re-shoot that for four days because the suit won't dry."
The single take worked and the video was a hit.
"I always wanted more when I'm in the suit," he said.
Today, Clemson's mascot has nearly 11,000 followers on Twitter.
Becoming Big Al was something very few of Dakota's friends could have seen coming. He was a shy soccer player who only tried out to become his high school's mascot after some prodding from a former teacher.
During that high school tryout, he wore only the Bulldog head so the audience knew who it was. He had to walk onto the center of a mat while music played over a loudspeaker, and he was told to dance.
"That was probably the scariest thing," he said. "I'm sitting there in front of 10-20 pretty cheerleaders, and that's not something anyone was used to."
He nearly wept -- "maybe a little bit," he admitted -- but he got the job.
Then came the hard part: walking down the stairway to the football game, hearing the crowd screaming.
"I was just sitting there thinking, 'No one knows who I am, but this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever done,'" he said. "It's just extremely overwhelming. It's so overwhelming you're on the verge of crying. You don't know what to do. It's crazy."
He made it to the field and found his spot on the sideline. When he heard fans chanting the mascot's name, he began to calm down.
Slowly it started to sink in: OK, they like me. Eat this up. They like me. Keep this up and make them like me even more. Keep it going and get everyone's eyes on me.
He was surprised how much he enjoyed it. He had never accepted that part of him that enjoyed the attention, he said.
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