Marvel and ESPN Team-Up to Hype College Football Playoff 2015

Marvel Comics has once again teamed up with sister company ESPN, this time to help them hype up the College Football Playoff. The second year of the playoff kicks off on New Year’s Eve with the semifinal round.

The matchups are Michigan State vs. Alabama and Oklahoma vs Clemson – but just reading it as words is boring! No, if you really want to get hyped, you have to have a Marvel artist draw the matchups as battles between the respective mascots.

Of course, the problem then arises that two of these teams have nonsense mascots.

In the Orange Bowl, it’s the Oklahoma Sooners vs the Clemson Tigers. Okay, tigers, that one’s easy. But what’s a sooner? Well, they’re basically people that jumped onto claims ahead of the rule of law. So, they’re represented currently by a pair of white ponies, but because a pony isn’t too intimidating we get a buff antrhopomorphic Horse. Okay, cool. Boomer, Sooners.

For the Cotton Bowl, it’s the Alabama Crimson Tide vs the Michigan State Spartans (Go State Go!). We’ll do our best to avoid any jokes about “surfing the crimson wave” (oops), but because a flood of blood would be a bit too biblical, the Tide instead use an elephant named Big Al. Indeed, both the elephant and crimson tide name were apparently coined by journalists, so on behalf of them, our bad. That elephant phases Sparty the Spartan (Go Green!), who is… a Spartan. Yes, their name is of the greatest warriors of ancient Greece, and their mascot is one of those warriors. Go figure (Go White!).

Regardless of where your loyalties lie in these contests (B1G!), it’s fun when this kind of corporate synergy lets fans get into the action a bit. Now instead of just which team will win, we can argue whether Spartans can beat Elephants and whether Muscular Horses can beat Tigers.

Fight! Fight! Rah Team Fight! Victory for MSU!

I didn’t show off my bias too much, did I?