Here's a confession: I was in the Otto costume.
I don't remember what year it was (maybe 1990 or 1991?) but I lost a bet (some sort of drinking competition that I lost to a guy who outweighed me by about a hundred pounds) and had to try out to be Otto. The rehearsals were held at one of the gyms (Flanagan or Archibold?). We had some time to rehearse and figure out how to walk and cheer and stuff in the Otto costume. We also did some basic gymnastics stuff like tumbling. I say basic but I'm not much of an athlete and doing anything in that cumbersome costume is very difficult. It was actually the old Otto costume and smelled like sweat and ass. There were two costumes and I got stuck with the real old one.
The best thing about the rehearsals was getting to interact with the cheerleaders. Some of them were very hot and they had on small shorts and t-shirts. We even had to try to get to the top of the pyramid---that's a lot tougher than it looks. A lot of the Ottos are actually pretty good athletes and a few of them were members of the SU gymnastics team.
The actual tryouts were held in the Dome. There was a three or four person panel of judges, including the cheerleading coach. We were specifically told not to do anything provocative. I didn't want to be Otto, so my mission was to make a mockery of the tryout. (Plus, after the cheerleading coach saw me struggle with the basic gymnastics I'm surprised she even let me tryout.) After some basic clapping and jumping up and down, I srtarted to take off the white Otto gloves (like I was doing a striptease). My friends were watching and cracking up. The judges weren't pleased. They cut off my music immediately. The cheerleading coach shouted, "Thank you!!!" and I slinked away. At least I didn't wind up like Frank The Tank in Old School when he wore the mascot outfit.
