what in the world is a jayhawk... tarheel?

okay... i am the sports fan that i am because of the sports-based household i was raised in. no, sports weren't forced upon me, but every night when i would get home from school and practice, but dad would be watching some kind of game or sportscenter/espn show. my dad played basketball at Kansas... he was a jayhawk. my mom went to UNC- chapel hill and was a tarheel. i was a huge basketball fan of both of these schools but it just dawned on me the other day that i dont know that those two mascots are in real life.



the jayhawk is a mythical bird with an amazing history (i guess that i will never know what this mascot is in real life). the name combines two birds-the blue jay, a noisy, quarrelsome thing known to rob nests, and the sparrow hawk, a stealthy hunter. the message here: Do not turn your back on this bird.



the tarheel is a term that came from north carolina's abundant tar country. the tar, pitch and turpentine were all over north carolina's pine country. when in battles, north carolinians were called "tarheels" because of their tar-covered feet.
i thought that this lesson that i learned was pretty cool. for some reason i never thought about what the terms actually meant... at least my kids will know exactly what a mustang is!