Move over, Friar Dom — there’s a new (terrifying) sheriff in town.
He won’t be roaming the arena tonight during his team’s game against Ohio State, but Ace Purple – the law-breaking, gun-wielding mascot of the Evansville Purple Aces — deserves a place among the creepiest mascots in college sports.
While Purdue Pete, Friar Dom, and the Saint Louis Billiken get plenty of credit for being the creepiest, most disconcerting symbols of collegiate athletics, ‘Ace Purple’, the mascot of Ohio State’s opponent Tuesday night, is also worthy of that title.
The legend of Ace Purple goes back 100 years to the 1924 basketball season, when Evansville – then know as the Pioneers – beat Louisville 59-39. After the game, Louisville head coach Fred Enke told Evansville head coach John Harmon, “You didn’t have four Aces up your sleeve, you had five!”
The nickname stuck, and since Evansville’s school colors were purple and white at the time, the nickname “Purple Aces” was adopted.
In the late 1960s, Ace Purple, a gun-toting, slippery riverboat gambler, was created to represent Evansville athletics. Evansville lies in southern Indiana directly on the banks of the Ohio River, so the untrustworthy card shark made sense, at least geographically speaking.
However, the image of Ace Purple brandishing a gun in one hand and a spiked club in the other, paired with a cigar hanging out of his mouth, lost popularity by the late 1970s. The University “was not pleased” with the image of Ace Purple, and he suddenly disappeared, despite the athletic teams still going by the Purple Aces.
When Evansville athletics moved to Division-I in 1977, Greg Knipping, the university’s sports information director at the time, wanted to bring Ace Purple back to life. After contacting the same artist who helped bring Purdue Pete back to life, Knipping and the university turned Ace Purple into a more “likable” character, while keeping the characteristics of “cunning, quick wit, and shrewd judgment.”
Ace Purple was redesigned yet again in 2019, becoming less menacing but far creepier. His large, cartoonish eyes were replaced by small beady black dots hidden underneath Waluigi-like eyebrows. His broad shoulders were replaced with a slimmer frame and his white 10-gallon cowboy hat was replaced with a purple bowler’s hat.
But the worst part by far are his teeth.
Ace Purple, who previously had a closed set of lips hidden under a massive brown mustache, now has a fully opened mouth that shows off a full set of teeth. Teeth don’t belong in the mouths of lifeless, mute mascots. Imagine Brutus with teeth, or Western Kentucky’s Big Red with a full set of mandibles – it just doesn’t sit right with me.
Nearly every school’s mascot has a long, winding history that includes a makeover or two, but Ace Purple’s journey from a tobacco-loving, firearm carrying card shark to the less threatening but far more creepy Waluigi-look alike deserved some love today, before Evansville takes on Ohio State for the fifth time in program history and the first time since 1976.