Search the Community

Back in 2003 or 2004 I found a t-shirt with the Iowa Hawkeyes mascot holding a mug of beer: In 2006 I sold it on eBay for $40 which was a lot for a t-shirt back then. The other day while browsing around on Pinterest I found an extremely similar t-shirt, and here is the cropped and zoomed-in graphic: Obviously the same artist or t-shirt company made both of these, due to the same font used, the same reclining pose of the mascots, and almost the identical foam on the mugs of beer. My theory about these shirts is a local t-shirt company in Iowa decided to make some easy cash by selling them outside the football stadiums of these two teams, because obviously a university would never approve of and then officially license an image of its mascot holding a beer. HOWEVER, the late 70's and early 80's, the era these shirts are from, were different times. The legal drinking age back then was 18, and drinking was considered an essential part of college life, so much so that the college I went to rented a Coors truck for the day back in 1979 and handed out free beers to students on the green! Something like that would NEVER happen now a days, so if a college would sanction and pay for free beer being handed out to students, who says they couldn't license an image of their mascot holding a beer? It's totally possible. Unlikely, but possible. I just thought it was cool how these two shirts, albeit representing two different schools, obviously used the same template. It makes me very curious if the artist or company that made these also made them for other schools, or possibly pro teams. Has anyone else ever seen these shirts or ones like them before?