Bowling Green emoji shirt
What happens when you combine college students’ love of football, emojis and free things? You get the University of Maryland cultural entity that is the emoji T-shirt.
For each of the Terrapins football home games played this year, a shirt featuring emojis has accompanied it. Each emoji shirt is formatted in the same way: The turtle emoji, representing the Terrapin mascot, is proudly displayed on the left side of the shirt next to a “greater than” sign, which points toward another emoji that represents the Terps’ opponents. This magical formula has inspired multitudes of students to show up to games early just to get their hands on a free shirt.
As with any collector’s item, some are far better than others. With a limited number of emojis to choose from, the emoji shirts often display emojis that are more than a bit of a stretch to represent the opposing teams. With that in mind, I’ve ranked some 2015 Terps emoji shirts, from the vague and confusing to the most appropriate and recognizable emoji representations.
6) Maryland vs. Richmond
Upon first glance, the Terps-Richmond shirt seems to be saying, “Turtles are better than ants.” If the University of Richmond mascot were the ant, this shirt would be a fabulous representation of that sentiment. However, an ant is a horrible mascot. Not only is it a horrible mascot, it also is not the University of Richmond mascot. Alas, the Richmond mascot is the spider. This shirt does its best, but comparing ants to spiders is like comparing apples and oranges — similar, but not nearly the same.
5) Maryland vs. Penn State
Penn State’s mascot is the Nittany Lion, a specific type of lion thought to have once traversed Pennsylvania’s Mount Nittany. Notice it is the Nittany Lion and not the Nittany house cat. The emoji shirt for this game depicted a turtle emoji being greater than a cat emoji. It’s definitely funny to swap an opposing team’s regal beast of a mascot with a much daintier member of the feline community. Yet with no lion emoji in existence at the time of the shirt’s creation, it’s clear that the creators of the shirt were just looking for any sort of cat to fill the spot.
4) Maryland vs. Michigan
The Terps-Michigan shirt exists near the midpoint of this list because it seems like such a solid, well-intentioned effort. However, it ultimately falls flat. The emoji chosen to represent Michigan looks more like a cryptic Egyptian hieroglyphic rather than the letter “M” for Michigan. Granted, Michigan’s mascot is the wolverine, an animal that does not occupy a space on the emoji keyboard. But the strange yellow worm/lightning bolt hybrid standing in for Michigan just doesn’t do the trick.
3) Maryland vs. Wisconsin
Similar to the Terps-Michigan emoji shirt, the Terps-Wisconsin shirt is also a well-intentioned choice that just isn’t convincing. The two hands positioned in a “W” shape, not necessarily a classic in the emoji community, are obviously supposed to represent “W” for Wisconsin. However, the hands also look as though they could be saying “stop” or “look at the cool bird shadow puppet I’m about to make.” For that reason, it’s still not a complete success.
2) Maryland vs. South Florida
Simply put, this design gets straight to the point, which is why it is the second most successful emoji shirt. When you look at the emoji on this shirt you think, “bull.” When you Google the name of South Florida’s mascot, you get “bulls.” It’s a brown cow with horns and it gets the job done.
1) Maryland vs. Bowling Green
This selection might not seem like a good choice for the best and most successful emoji shirt, but hear me out. First of all, taken out of context, this shirt is hilarious. It seems to just mean “turtles are better than bowling” or “turtles before bowling,” as if a devoted turtle lover had one of his prized Terrapins crushed by a bowling ball and needed the world to know that when prioritizing reptiles and indoor sports, reptiles should always come first. Furthermore, the Bowling Green mascot is the falcon, which, if on the emoji keyboard, could have been used as a cool, menacing representation of their school. However, the bowling emoji is still able to convey the name of the university while also reminding Bowling Green that part of their university’s name involves what is arguably the lamest sport. The Terps might have lost to Bowling Green on the field that day, but at least the shirt did us justice.
