Give Him A Crowd, He’ll Make It Loud Everyone’s A Pal Of The Cougar Mascot, Even Without Knowing The Real Butch

Meet Washington State University’s biggest man on campus. Sort of.

Swaggering with a boxer’s bounce on black Nike high-tops, he high-fives all the guys, squeezes the women and hugs babies like a candidate on the stump.

They all dig him big time, greeting him with a refrain of the name synonymous with Cougar.

“Hey, Butch, how you doin’?” he hears.

“Butchie!”

“Butch! Go Cougs!”

“Great day for a ballgame.”

“Cougs by three. We got ‘em whooped.”

“Butch.”

“Butch!”

“Buuuuutch.”

And that was just while cruising the corporate party tents before Saturday’s 24-15 college football upset of UCLA. Once out on Martin Stadium’s plastic turf, before 33,711 fans, the WSU mascot was a maestro of mania, throwing himself into the raucous student section, wringing cheers from all quarters.

Eighty-plus decibels, all from a cat that can’t speak.

It’s the payoff for turning one’s self into a fur-cloaked ball of sweat.

“When you’re out in front of 35,000 fans, and all of them are at your fingertips while you’re doing the Go Cougs cheer - there’s nothing bigger than that,” said Butch’s closest acquaintance, who spoke only on condition of anonymity.

He’s not quite turning 100 this year with the rest of WSU’s football program, but Butch does date back to a homecoming halftime in 1927, when then-Gov. Roland Hartley presented a real live cougar to the students of what was then Washington State College.

He took his name from Butch Meeker, the school’s football hero at the time, and went on to have six Lassie-like incarnations. Then, an animal rights furor over the aging Butch VI’s euthanasia in 1978 killed the tradition of a live cougar mascot.

Butch the biped followed, with students auditioning for the unpaid two-year terms as the embodiment of WSU spirit.

It’s no picnic, as each WSU game becomes a true athletic event for the mascot.

“Half of them change their mind after tryouts just from the sweat that pours off them,” said Ron Davis, Butch’s boss and the athletic department’s director of marketing and promotions.

The Butch de jour was nearly felled by heat stroke at a basketball game last year. But his performance has been so consistently gregarious and animated that he was asked to stay on a third year and did not unmask in the traditional unveiling during the last home basketball game last winter.

He was in full form in Saturday’s 80-degree heat and sun, walking and running almost nonstop in his nylon football uniform, helmet-like head and layer of fur.

Outside the stadium - among the corporate tents and inside the field house - he had his picture taken 16 times, including a snap with Curtis Hampton of Spokane, who had bet a friend $50 he could get a picture of himself tackling Butch.

While the marching band played “Louie, Louie,” Butch danced with Emily Easterwood, a student at Spokane’s Finch Elementary School who happens to be turning 8 today.

At game time in Martin Stadium, he orchestrated the consummate moment of tension as the band played the “Jaws” theme in front of him and the football players strode through the darkened tunnel, clapping.

After pulling a WSU flag behind his Honda scooter, he improvised through the student section, then in the reserve seats on the south side. He was a study in body language, climbing on guardrails and using an orchestra conductor’s motions to raise the volume.

He shook more hands in a day than WSU President Sam Smith shakes in a month. At one point, he walked up 13 rows without once using the aisle. Then he briefly walked off with Steve Heston, age 5, in his arms.

Steve’s mom, Rexann, didn’t mind.

“We have season tickets,” she said. “He sees him all the time.”

Butch doesn’t drink coffee for all this energy, but he does watch WSU motivational videos of Cougar highlights, then listens to the highlight music on his way to the game.

In two quarters, he drank eight cups of Gatorade and a cup of water. Shortly before halftime, he ran toward the trainer’s room, running and clapping his hands in the empty hallways.

After a 20-minute break, he was not so eager. He took a long pause before pulling his game face back on.

Sweat seeped from the seams of his tail. It was clearly dragging.

Butch the Cougar may be a hero, but he’s only human. Sort of.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo