Commentary: L.A.'s Olympics mascot — please, not for the birds

7 min Click here to listen to this article Share via Close extra sharing options Email Facebook X LinkedIn Threads Reddit WhatsApp Copy Link URL Copied! Print 0:00 0:00 1x This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here. Love ya, Jackie and Shadow, but no more bald eagles as Olympic mascots, period. On drafting boards and computer screens hither and yon, a menagerie’s worth of creatures – actual and imaginary – have been created and discarded, eliminated and cast aside like luckless beauty pageant contestants, down to perhaps a dozen, then a handful, and at last a winner will be revealed: the official mascot for the 2028 Los Angeles summer Olympics. The mystery mascot’s debut could still be six months away. A spectator holds a Phryge, the Olympic mascot, while watching a beach volleyball match at the 2024 Summer Olympics, on Aug. 2, 2024, in Paris, France. (Robert F. Bukaty / Associated Press) The last time L.A. hosted the summer Olympics, in 1984, the mascot stepped out four long years before the games began. He was Sam the Eagle, our national bird transformed by a Disney artist, and to some eyes bearing a slight resemblance to an earlier Disney avian character, a parrot. Peter Ueberroth, the head of the L.A. Olympics committee, allowed as how “fuzzy duck” was not an apt description for Sam. Why did Sam get such an early hatching, back in 1980, but we’re awaiting 2028’s mascot? First, Sam was probably stealing a march on Russia. The US had boycotted the 1980 Moscow games over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and in 1984, the Soviet Union retaliated by staying home from L.A. The Moscow closing ceremonies were on a Sunday, Aug. 30, 1980; within hours, Sam the Eagle stepped out. And down. Get the latest from Patt Morrison Los Angeles is a complex place. Luckily, there's someone who can provide context, history and culture. By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service, which include arbitration and a class action waiver. You agree that we and our third-party vendors may collect and use your information, including through cookies, pixels and similar technologies, for the purposes set forth in our Privacy Policy such as personalizing your experience and ads. Escorted by actor and perpetual emcee Bob Hope, Sam the Eagle descended the L.A. City Hall steps, all seven and a half feet of him, tall as a Lakers center but clumsy as a swan on dry land. Sam got a little cocky, tried a show-off spin, got his bird legs tangled and took a tumble. It required a few staff members to get him on his fuzzy feet again. Second, to put it bald-eagly, that extra lead time gave Sam an opportunity to make money. L.A.’s 1984 games had promised not to cost Angelenos even so much as change for a penny, so they had the benefit — the necessity — of a lot of private money, some of thanks to licensing deal involving Sam. L.A.’s games became the first to end up in the black. If you think that’s a meh deal, compare L.A. 1984 to Montreal 1976. L.A. ended up banking about a quarter-billion bucks. Montreal’s mascot was Amik, the industrious Canadian beaver. Yet even Amik needed 30 years to chew his way out of the billion dollars in red ink that the Montreal Olympics cost. Sam commanded top dollar as an Olympic-licensed property. As a nameless licensee told The Times in 1984, a properly promoted Sam “could do $200 million.” A pledge of at least $4 million allowed sponsors to use Sam in ads and promos. Sam and Ronald McDonald co-starred in a commercial. And Olympic-sponsor hierarchy was guarded like vestal virginity. When the L.A.-based chicken chain Pioneer bought a few hundred thousand plastic toy Sams from an official Olympic licensee (the ranking below sponsorship) to give away with buckets of its chicken, McDonald’s and the L.A. Olympic committee asked a federal judge to stop it. The judge refused to end the toy Sam giveaway, but ordered Pioneer to stop using the Olympic rings and L.A.’s star-in-motion symbols. Voices Commentary: At ease — permanently. The SoCal military academies that thrived and then folded their tents At the start of the 20th century, Southern California was home to an astonishing number of military academies designed to turn boys into officers and gentlemen. By 1980, random Americans had already offered their own notions for a mascot, but in the end, it was a pro, a Disney artist named Bob Moore, who rummaged through California’s animal and vegetable kingdoms — “rabbits, and turtles, frogs. I even had a cactus.” None of them filled the mascot-sized hole. Moore tried a bison, that shaggy American prairie symbol. Even Moore couldn’t make the bison work. “A four-legged creature is hard to make look right because he has to stand up and do things,” he told The Times — athletic things, like performing a pirouette. And so Sam it was, but an eagle that was more comical than menacing, so as not to scare the kiddies and customers — a happy raptor. The earliest Olympic mas

Commentary: L.A.'s Olympics mascot — please, not for the birds

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