Osceola and Renegade
The Osceola and Renegade mascots were conceived by Bill Durham, a Tallahassee businessman and Florida State alumnus. He came up with the concept of a horseback-riding Seminole mascot as early as 1962, when he was voted into the school's homecoming court. He returned to the idea in 1977, and won the support of Ann Bowden, wife of head football coach Bobby Bowden, who helped make the idea a reality. Durham contacted the Seminole Tribe of Florida about the project, and chairman Howard Tommie had tribe members make the first costume for Osceola. Durham provided the horse, while Bowden helped acquire the various permits necessary to allow a horse onto the field.
Pounce (mascot)
Georgia State University has had multiple names and mascots (under its various names), beginning with an Owl in 1940 when the school was Georgia Evening College (due to it being a night school). In 1947, the school would, for no apparent reason, change the athletics teams' names to the Ramblers. This would again change in 1955 to the Panthers, however at that time no mascot existed for the school. Claws the Panther, the first personified blue panther, was created in the early 1980s to support the GSU basketball team. Both the school's student newspaper, the Signal, and the yearbook, The Cauldron, identified the mascot as being played by Jay Black who would later become a professor at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. In 1989, Urbie, a crimson panther was created, but would only remain until 1993 when a new mascot, Pounce, was unveiled. The original Pounce was a cartoonish, muscular blue panther with yellow eyes, a red nose and four fingers on each hand with yellow claws on each. This remained the university's mascot with slight variations (including more ferocious facial gestures) up until 2009. As the university unveiled its new football team, it also unveiled a new Pounce, complete with a sleeker design. This is the current mascot in use.