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History of the Sebastian design?

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sebastian91

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Anyone know when the 'fighting Sebastian' was designed? Ran across this old program from 1974 for the Ville-Emard Hurricanes in Montreal. Obviously the same design...I'm just wondering where that design came from, who had it first, etc. Anyone know?

https://capsports2000.com/en/item38248868.php

Left to right: J.J. Daigneault, Mario Lemieux, Marc Bergevin and Robert Bourdeau seen on an old picture from their former minor hockey league team the Ville-Emard Hurricanes which produced three NHL players from the same team.
 
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If the wiki on it is to be believed..

The ibis was chosen as Miami's unofficial mascot by Nathan Duncan in 1926 when the school's yearbook chose its name to be "The Ibis."

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Came for the Ibis talk. Stayed for the Mario Lemieux retrospective!
 
Lokest said:
If the wiki on it is to be believed..

The ibis was chosen as Miami's unofficial mascot by Nathan Duncan in 1926 when the school's yearbook chose its name to be "The Ibis."

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Uh...no.

Yes, we chose the Ibis as a mascot early.

HOWEVER, we did not design "the bird" as we now know it, or name him Sebastian, until much later.

It was in the 1950s that the San Sebastian dormitory designed a large anthropomorphic ibis as a part of its Homecoming float festivities.

For a while, we had a mascot costume that had an enormous head. The drawings of Sebastian, before the mid-80s, were also pretty...unlike what you see today. When I started at UM in 1986, we still had leftover "1983 national championship" gear being sold at the UM bookstore, and it didn't look great (also, like Nike, nobody could get the right shade of green before the mid-80s).

Then, Ron Fraser hired a guy named John Routh, who had been playing "****y the Gamecock" for several years as an undergrad and grad student at the University of South Carolina. At first, Routh was hired as the "Miami Maniac", and he also (as just "the Maniac") served as the mascot for the College World Series.

Eventually, the "round" Miami Maniac was determined to work well in baseball and basketball settings, but not football. Routh then redesigned the Sebastian costume, as well as drawing the iconic "Sebastian with the corncob pipe" logo.

Whenever we use either the corncob pipe Sebastian logo or the more PC "Sebastian doesn't smoke" logo, a royalty is paid to John Routh (who left UM when he became the very first Billy the Marlin mascot). This is the reason why the Nike rat-******** created the "clam" logo, so that they wouldn't have to pay John Routh.

Anyhow, the redesigned Sebastian (logo and costume) started in the mid-80s and has continued even after Routh left, as students (I think they pick 4) serve as the Sebastian/Maniac performers.
 
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While I responded from memory, I just figured out that Wikipedia also has a writeup:



The ibis was chosen as Miami's unofficial mascot by Nathan Duncan in 1926 when the school's yearbook chose its name to be "The Ibis."[1]

"Miami adopted a native marsh bird called the Ibis as the official mascot in 1926. The Ibis is known for its bravery as a hurricane approaches. Folklore maintains that other birds look to the Ibis for leadership. The Ibis uses its instinct to detect danger. It is the last sign of wildlife to take shelter before a hurricane hits, giving warning that danger is imminent. As the storm passes the Ibis is the first to reappear, a sign that clear skies are approaching."[1][2]

Sebastian the Ibis
The first official mascot for the Miami Hurricanes was a 65-pound brown and white boxer dog named Hurricane I. Chosen in 1950, the canine wore a ceremonial orange and green blanket with his name lettered in white.

Sebastian was created in August 1957 by Norman A. Whitten, Director of the Student Union at UM, and was used as a homecoming competition entry. The next year, student John Stormont performed at Hurricanes football games dressed up in a makeshift ibis costume. The original costume was made from various materials: armolite insulation for the head, white terry cloth for the body to resemble feathers, ROTC spats for the feet, and toes made from burlap. "The whole costume took three weeks to complete and cost about $30", Stormont said in a Miami Herald interview. The current costume dates from 1984.[1]

The ibis was originally named "Icky", but was then renamed after San Sebastian Hall (where Stormont was a resident), which became a university dormitory in 1939. The building, now an apartment building, still stands at the intersection of LeJeune Road and University Drive in Coral Gables.

During the first national championship season for the Miami Hurricanes football team, including their 31-30 victory over #1 Nebraska in the Orange Bowl, the Ibis was portrayed by Bill Mooney, a senior at the university, from Orangeburg, NY. This second generation Ibis costume was designed and made by UM alumnus and former Disney artist Randy Jack (RJ) Ogren. It was also in the National Championship victory parade riding with Coach Schnellenberger. [3]

From 1984 through 1992, Sebastian was portrayed by John Routh, who also portrayed The Miami Maniac at baseball games, and later Billy the Marlin for the Florida Marlins. Routh created what is now Sebastian's signature: the C-A-N-E-S cheer, where Sebastian forms the letters with his body.[4]

Sebastian was tackled by a group of policemen in 1989 for attempting to put out Chief Osceola's flaming spear. At the time he was wearing a fireman’s helmet and yellow raincoat and holding a fire extinguisher. When a police officer tried to grab the fire extinguisher he was sprayed in the chest. Sebastian was handcuffed by the other four officers but released when they realized how ridiculous it looked for them to be arresting a bird.

Sebastian typically leads the University of Miami football team as it enters the field through the smoke.
 
I stand corrected then. I was always under the impression the logo was around since the 70's in some capacity.

Does that mean Routh took inspiration from that hockey team logo?
 
TheOriginalCane said:
Lokest said:
If the wiki on it is to be believed..

The ibis was chosen as Miami's unofficial mascot by Nathan Duncan in 1926 when the school's yearbook chose its name to be "The Ibis."

View attachment 53169
Click to expand...




Uh...no.

Yes, we chose the Ibis as a mascot early.

HOWEVER, we did not design "the bird" as we now know it, or name him Sebastian, until much later.

It was in the 1950s that the San Sebastian dormitory designed a large anthropomorphic ibis as a part of its Homecoming float festivities.

For a while, we had a mascot costume that had an enormous head. The drawings of Sebastian, before the mid-80s, were also pretty...unlike what you see today. When I started at UM in 1986, we still had leftover "1983 national championship" gear being sold at the UM bookstore, and it didn't look great (also, like Nike, nobody could get the right shade of green before the mid-80s).

Then, Ron Fraser hired a guy named John Routh, who had been playing "****y the Gamecock" for several years as an undergrad and grad student at the University of South Carolina. At first, Routh was hired as the "Miami Maniac", and he also (as just "the Maniac") served as the mascot for the College World Series.

Eventually, the "round" Miami Maniac was determined to work well in baseball and basketball settings, but not football. Routh then redesigned the Sebastian costume, as well as drawing the iconic "Sebastian with the corncob pipe" logo.

Whenever we use either the corncob pipe Sebastian logo or the more PC "Sebastian doesn't smoke" logo, a royalty is paid to John Routh (who left UM when he became the very first Billy the Marlin mascot). This is the reason why the Nike rat-******** created the "clam" logo, so that they wouldn't have to pay John Routh.

Anyhow, the redesigned Sebastian (logo and costume) started in the mid-80s and has continued even after Routh left, as students (I think they pick 4) serve as the Sebastian/Maniac performers.
Click to expand...

Interesting. So Routh 'borrowed' the Ville-Emard logo? They were clearly using that design in the early 1970s, but Routh didn't create the Sebastian logo until after he got here?
 
sebastian91 said:
Lokest said:
I stand corrected then. I was always under the impression the logo was around since the 70's in some capacity.

Does that mean Routh took inspiration from that hockey team logo?
Click to expand...

Inspiration might be a mild descriptor?
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OK, so I'm not sure what lokest and sebastian are referring to, but I was simply going off what I was told.

I have physically seen, and I once owned, "pre-Sebastian-corncob-pipe" Miami clothing. It looked horrible, thus I did not keep any of it.

If you are saying that there is a version of the Sebastian-corncob-pipe logo before 1984, please post a photo. It might be true that a drawing exists, and that is was not copyrighted.

I have ALWAYS heard that John Routh updated the drawing. Perhaps that was more due to minor changes than what I was led to believe in the 1980s. I am certain that Routh has the copyright on the "corncob pipe" Sebastian, as we came to know it in the 80s and 90s. When I was at UM, I wrote for the Hurricane (newspaper) and the Ibis (yearbook), and we frequently had people write various stories on our histories and traditions, and this would have been while John Routh was still there.

I'm simply not familiar with the references you guys are making to a hockey logo or a "Ville-Emard" logo. Maybe he took his design from something already in existence, I'm not sure.

As we all know, the Oregon duck was VERY much like Donald Duck for a long time.

The Louisville Cardinal logo was the spitting image of the St. Louis Cardinals (football) logo.

I don't know the history on every "very similar" logo, I just know that I had been told that John Routh was instrumental in the redesign of the logo and costume (though Wikipedia says another guy worked on the costume as well). I do know that Routh also worked with Disney on the Billy the Marlin costume, so maybe it was the same collaborator that is mentioned in Wikipedia.
 
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sebastian91 said:
Lokest said:
I stand corrected then. I was always under the impression the logo was around since the 70's in some capacity.

Does that mean Routh took inspiration from that hockey team logo?
Click to expand...

Inspiration might be a mild descriptor?
Click to expand...



OK, so I'm not sure what lokest and sebastian are referring to, but I was simply going off what I was told.

I have physically seen, and I once owned, "pre-Sebastian-corncob-pipe" Miami clothing. It looked horrible, thus I did not keep any of it.

If you are saying that there is a version of the Sebastian-corncob-pipe logo before 1984, please post a photo. It might be true that a drawing exists, and that is was not copyrighted.

I have ALWAYS heard that John Routh updated the drawing. Perhaps that was more due to minor changes than what I was led to believe in the 1980s. I am certain that Routh has the copyright on the "corncob pipe" Sebastian, as we came to know it in the 80s and 90s. When I was at UM, I wrote for the Hurricane (newspaper) and the Ibis (yearbook), and we frequently had people write various stories on our histories and traditions, and this would have been while John Routh was still there.

I'm simply not familiar with the references you guys are making to a hockey logo or a "Ville-Emard" logo. Maybe he took his design from something already in existence, I'm not sure.

As we all know, the Oregon duck was VERY much like Donald Duck for a long time.

The Louisville Cardinal logo was the spitting image of the St. Louis Cardinals (football) logo.

I don't know the history on every "very similar" logo, I just know that I had been told that John Routh was instrumental in the redesign of the logo and costume (though Wikipedia says another guy worked on the costume as well). I do know that Routh also worked with Disney on the Billy the Marlin costume, so maybe it was the same collaborator that is mentioned in Wikipedia.
 
OK, sorry guys, I see the logo now.

Yeah, it does look like the "modern Sebastian" was taken from that logo.

Pre-internet 1984...I can imagine that nobody really realized it at the time.
 
Wow. Yeah, the resemblance is striking...

I would imagine that someone either intentionally or unintentionally used that logo as the inspiration. I have NEVER seen that logo on anything else FROM UM prior to the mid-1980s.

When I worked on the Ibis yearbook, we had old issues back to the 1920s. I have NEVER seen that logo used prior to the 1987 yearbook, which was mostly a khaki-colored yearbook with an orange and a green stripe on the cover, and then the 1988 yearbook did not have an ibis (blue cover).

images



This was the Ibis Yearbook from my freshman year at UM (1986-1987). The year before (1985-86) was a black cover with fireworks. The year before that (1984-85) was a mostly whitish cover with no graphic. Before that, I do not believe John Routh had redesigned the drawing.

Many of the later Ibis yearbooks did not feature Sebastian either, we had one cover that was very dark gray (1988-89) and then I think there was a black cover (1989-90).

All of my Ibis yearbooks are boxed up right now.
 
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Sebastian just isnt the same without the pipe and the band-aid. That to me is 'Coke Classic' Ibis...
 
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They should bring back Jay Rokeach as the stadium announcer and John Routh as Sebastian.
 
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[video=youtube;WmDjZHQTGvU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmDjZHQTGvU[/video]
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Love those photos.

As you can see, the original Ibis costume had an ENORMOUS head.

Also, in that one photo (just before Sebastian is arresed by the F$U cops), you can see a young Yamma Yamma (Jim Fleming) about whom I wrote an article for the Ibis Yearbook when AD Dave "Maggot" Maggard forced him to retire in the 1990s.
 
k9cane said:
Sebastian just isnt the same without the pipe and the band-aid. That to me is 'Coke Classic' Ibis...
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I agree 100%.

Love the "sailor hat", that is definitely an update of the French-Canadian toque.

MUST have the bandages and the pipe.

I loved the old "jersey", even though it only had an M on it. I could support updating to "Miami" or the "split-U" on the jersey, but the newer "jersey" has that Nike striping from the late 90s/early 00s time period. Need to go back to a "classic" jersey.

I can't understand why some logos have the bill and/or feet colored yellow. Should be orange for both.

I've never liked the "super-muscular" Sebastian either.
 
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