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
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 Game****" 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.
