Jon Gruden ranks college football's scariest mascots

Gruden spent his career getting fired up over film of defensive linemen. This Halloween he gets just as fired up over mascots, and he hams up every one of them.

Jon Gruden

@BarstoolGruden

It's HALLOWEEN and I thought I'd give out my scariest mascots in all of college football! Who did I miss?? @reeses

The set does a lot of the work here. A fake skull sits on the desk with a pack of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups in its bloody teeth, and a sign for the Gruden Family Football Show sits next to it. Tulsa's tornado guy gets the split-screen treatment, flexing on the field in a white #1 jersey while Gruden acts like he might bolt from the chair. Then comes a real live tiger, which looks a lot like LSU's Mike the Tiger, though nothing on screen says which school it belongs to. Fair enough. A live cat with teeth is scarier than any guy in a foam suit.

It's sponsored Halloween fun, not breaking news, and that's fine. The scariest-mascot debate comes back every October, and the usual names are easy to guess: Wake Forest's Demon Deacon, Purdue Pete and his blank stare, plus whatever tiger is closest to you. Gruden ending with "Who did I miss??" is basically an invitation for every fanbase to show up in the replies and argue for its own nightmare.

This is also the version of Gruden that Barstool has been selling all season. He joined the company in 2024 and brought back his pre-draft QB film breakdowns. This fall Barstool hired his brother Jay, a former Washington head coach, and the two launched the Gruden Family Football Show with Kayce Smith. A goofy candy bit mixed in with the football talk fits that show perfectly.

Gruden's crossover appeal keeps showing up in strange places. At Fore Play's Internet Invitational this month, one of the golfers admitted on camera that he once had no idea who the coach was.

F

Fore Play Golf

on YouTube

“I remember last year I didn't know who Coach Gruden was. That was a mistake.”

0:45

That golfer knows him now, and a whole lot of college football fans are about to have opinions on his Halloween list. Expect the Demon Deacon truthers, the Purdue Pete crowd and every tiger school out there to be lining up in Gruden's mentions with the mascots he missed.