McCook has a great helmet; the logo is very original and has something to do with the school name, not the mascot. This is my made-up McCook helmet, based on the Buffalo Bills design.
Hastings has a good helmet; the paw is a classic but good logo. Hastings has a H design with tiger stripes on it that I have seen around on sweatshirts. I would like to see that on their helmet. This is my made-up Hastings helmet.
We’ll go with the home team for post #2.
The Hastings High helmet has been unchanged since 1989 when new coach Walt Olson added this version of the Clemson paw to the Tigers orange shell (which had been blank since 1985). Around this time HHS also converted from white masks to black.
I’ll let my son add more later to this post, except to mention that the Clemson paw, so often imitated is protected by Clemson University by a small mark in the lower right area of the paw. You can see the notch in the paw on this Clemson sweatshirt. Hastings, Kearney and other paw-schools do not have that notch.
My all-time Hastings athlete list:
1. Tom Osborne- 1955 athlete of the year, NFL player, did a little coaching
2. Johnny Hopp- 1935, played in World Series for Yanks and Cards, MLB all-star (brother Harry (37) played for the NFL Lions)
3. Chuck Stickles- 1949, ‘Thin Man’ was all-America football and basketball at Hastings College
4. Doug Phelps- 1975 athlete of year, first 7-foot high jumper in Nebraska
5. Bo Buettenback- 1994, all-state football, all-state basketball, qb’d state football champs
Since there has to be a first post this will be it.
One of my favorite Class B helmets is McCook. The Bison have a great logo that is quickly identifiable as them alone, yet it is still very clean and simple in design. I was surprised how hard it was to find that logo on the Internet. It doesn’t seem that McCook uses it as a school or district wide logo, rather it seems reserved for football. Is that true?
The school web site doesn’t seem to use it. They use a stylized buffalo head that I’ve seen elsewhere, I think. I thought it was the University of Buffalo, but couldn’t find it when I searched there. In the location bar on my Firefox browser when I visit the school page, the Buffalo Bills logo (with blue changed to McCook black) appears. I know they, like many Bison/Buffalo schools have used that logo in the past.
I wonder if there is some objection to the football helmet logo locally because it uses the “MC” initials even though McCook is one word. I don’t have my copy of _Nebraska Place Names_ handy, but I assume the town name has Irish roots. Their great stadium has cement “M” on the incline beyond the west end zone, not an “MC”. Still it’s a great use of text, in a simple but interesting font, to create a great signature.
McCook also spent a lot of money to display their helmet in their pre-game festivities as the team enters the field through a giant blow-up version of this helmet. There is an interesting bit of McCook football history up for sale on eBay right now. Check out this auction for a banner celebrating (I think) the 2002-2004 seasons. Wonder where this came from and why it’s for sale? And how it made its way to Minneapolis?
McCook’s recent football sucess (five finals and two championships in the last seven years) fits nicely in a long history of gridiron success. McCook claims to be the winningest team in Class B history, though I’m not sure how much documentation their is to back that up. They’ve had a run of great players but I would say that World War II-era all-stater Leo McKillip would still go down as their best athlete ever. Another good nominee for best Bison would be Nebraska football hero Jeff Kinney, who played quarterback McCook in 1967 (hope I have that year right).
