A dozen alumni sat with us and shared their stories of being Jonathan. From heartwarming to face-pounding, Jonathan has seen and done it all over 60 years. And while he never started a fight, he finished a few.
“I mean, let’s face it, it’s a crazy kind of thing to do,” says former Jonathan Joe Briody ’86 (BUS), ’95 MA, ’96 Ph.D. “It’s a very unique role to play on campus.”
Fight, Fight, Connecticut
They say it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye. With the Seton Hall Pirate already sporting an eye patch, he could almost be forgiven for not seeing what was in store after provoking our mascot in the Field House.
It was 1983, and Nick Zaharias ’85 (CLAS) and the Pirate had agreed to perform a fake fight at one end of the basketball court. Fake.
“If you notice in the photo, he had the Seton Hall flag in our gym, which he shouldn’t have been doing to begin with. He had it on a piece of lumber and he came up unannounced behind me and hit me on the back of the head. He actually cracked the Husky dog head.
“I immediately turned around and grabbed him and said, ‘What are you doing? This wasn’t our plan.’ And he said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you that hard.’”
Zaharias walked away — but then the Pirate hit him again, this time even harder.
“That’s when I kind of lost it. I’m like, well, that’s it. This is our turf. This is not going to stand.
“So I turned around and just started throwing punches and then he started throwing punches, but he had a rubber mask on and I had the big head. I think I took the flag off and threw it in the crowd. The crowd went nuts.
“And then I walked away like Rocky.”
That is, until the next day when then–athletic director John Toner called Zaharias to his office.
“He said, privately, ‘That was pretty cool. You protected the pride. But I gotta do something.’ So I had a little punishment. I think a friend had to be the Husky dog for one game or something like that.”
A couple of years later, Ray Shaw ’86 (CAHNR), ’02 MS took down the St. John’s mascot during a men’s basketball game in the Hartford Civic Center.
Late in the second half, with the visitors beating UConn badly, the opposing mascot approached Jonathan and suggested some lewd and unprintable theatrics. Shaw, knowing the crowd was watching, pushed him away with an exaggerated double hand wave.
“Then he comes over to me and reaches his hand out like, ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ So I go to shake his hand and he grabs me, and I say to myself, ‘This is it. It’s on.’”
With the St. John’s mascot pulling on the securely tied Husky head, Shaw wrestled him to the court, where they rolled beneath the basket until referees separated them. Shaw, still on the court, looked up — and straight into a video camera piping the whole thing into the Jumbotron.
“I did the first thing that came to mind: I put my arms up in a double bicep flex, and the crowd went absolutely nuts.”
The next morning, like Zaharias before him, Shaw found himself in John Toner’s office. Shaw was also suspended for a game.
