Hamilton’s teams are the Continentals (“Roll Conts!”), but their mascot is Alex. Honestly, although we love Hamilton and my D is having a fabulous experience there, we all admit it’s the weakest of the NESCAC mascots.
H is a Bowdoin alum and my D has Bowdoin swag with the polar bear, but she refuses to have Alex on anything! 
I like the Continentals and Alex. Reminds me a little of Wake Forest’s Demon Deacon.
Yeah, a little bit:
I don’t tend to stay at them, so I had to look it up.
In person, the Butts don’t give off that impression, but I agree the picture I posted reflects the style.
I love the,way Colby tries to make Morty the Mule look more fierce. Really. Not meant to be!
The common rooms are pretty sweet:
Wesleyan, too, “adjusted” the Cardinal a bit a few years ago to make it more fierce. Lol. My wife and I consider any moment a real Cardinal lands on a branch where we are to be enchanted. They’re lovely birds … not scary. 
This
to this
Actually, they’re both pretty mean looking. But this guy is just right:
Look at that stone work! Come on! Give the Butts a break folks. 
Drop that baby somewhere in Arizona, adverstise that Frank Lloyd Wright designed it to achieve some esoteric architectural aim that nobody really understands, and you can set it up as a tourist attraction.
Are there mascot “fights” at NESCAC games?
Bucky Badger has been known to throw down with the opposing mascot at UW (Madison) football games…
Yes, I have seen the Cardinal and the Eph do a pretend “duke it out” in the end zone at a football game. 
And thank goodness for that levity because, and this comes as a surprise to many, the Wes/Williams football rivalry actually carries some passion, and some alumni are known to behave in way that is not exactly commensurate to the importance and context of the actual game. It’s not Alabama and Auburn folks. lol.
That makes me want to stay at an Econo Lodge!
My random thoughts on the campuses/some visited during COVID with no one around, no skin in the game- no loyalties to any school…
Amherst: Liked- overall style, layout, freshman quad, proximity to main street. Disliked- abandoned science building in the middle of campus, library was meh, one dining hall
Bowdoin: Liked- variety of architecture, proximity to main street of cute town not too far from Portland, artic museum
Colby: Liked- wow sports complex is fab, new arts center/ dorms, got the sense they were getting things done. Disliked- Did not care for the campus architecture, looks like a NC school with all that brick. Library felt like one from a fancy high school.
Conn Coll: Liked- proximity to water, feels coastal, grounds are very nice. Disliked- felt like a prep school, everything looked kind of the same.
Hamilton: Liked- best thing they did was absorb Kirkland College- two halves are very complementary, spacious without feeling too large, made effort to link campus to greater communities Disliked- winter weather is extra level fierce, don’t have proper indoor gym for basketball, volleyball.
Midd: Liked- gorgeous campus- by far the prettiest for me, loved the use of the local whitish limestone, sports facility was excellent, ski mountain, gorgeous library. Disliked- remote, town is super small, Vermont itself is not terribly diverse
Trinity: Did not care for walled off campus, too much in contrast with surrounding neighborhood
Tufts: Appeared a little run down when we visited in pandemic times. Pretty views, nice there are other campuses for schools of art/medicine, definitely not a LAC
Wes: Appreciated eclectic arch style. Kind of liked but also disliked the field in the middle of campus. Appreciated graduated levels of housing as one progressed through. Food co-op on campus. Nice cultivated relationship with Middletown, cute main St
Williams: Gorgeous campus but remote. Somewhat mitigated by tiny little town street in the middle of campus. Unlike Amherst/Bowdoin with a similar $endowments, I distinctly felt the money on and surrounding campus.
We visited all but Amherst, Tufts, and Williams and didn’t like any of them at all except Hamilton, which we loved. Trinity’s campus is beautiful, but the location stinks.
Are we shifting to mascots now? Because we all know the Bobcat is the best! (As my avatar proves😆)
Common reaction. I think Andrus can only really be appreciated when a game is actually happening. In the abstract, it looks like a lot of wasted space right in the middle of campus. In fact, that is where Henry Bacon wanted to complete his Georgian quad, but I guess that the Defenders of Andrus won out on that battle. The length of time it has been in continuous use as athletic field is, as i understand, of some historical significance.
I do like the Bobcat, though in Maine a Lynx would have also been apropos. But query me this: would a Bobcat win in a fight with a Panther? Perhaps @MWolf or @arcadia might have something to say about that.
I suppose Bowdoin wins on the toughest mascot designation. Can’t really beat a Polar Bear.
The Bacon design did not anticipate Andrus Field ever actually being connected to Foss Hill. If you look carefully, you’ll see that Mount Vernon Street ran all the way through campus and IIRC, remained that way until the dorms were built in 1956. But, you’re right. Once the two parts of campus were connected, no one wanted to block the uninterrupted view of the observatory. That to me, is the “second act” following the stunning Easter Island “first look”:
Although she didn’t end up committing there, the idea of playing home games on the CoCo soccer field in the middle of campus was very compelling to my D. See great aerial views of the field at 0:32-0:39 and 00:50-1:10 in this video:
You visited all NESCACs but Bates? You really should have finished off that list! (Gorgeous campus too!)
I know it seems odd! My D was in discussion with all Nescac coaches except the one from Bates. Never heard from them.
