Football rivalry joke over 'clearance rack' mascot leads to fundraiser
Tiger conservation to benefit after Clemson roasted on GoFundMe page
A GoFundMe page started as a joke between football rivals has turned into an actual fundraiser.
Louisiana State University football fan Dion Grossnickle started the fundraiser page to purchase Clemson a new mascot costume on Jan. 13, the day LSU beat Clemson 42-25 in the College Football Playoff National Championship. Both teams have a tiger as their mascot.
Grossnickle joked that Clemson’s tiger looks like it was bought “from the clearance rack” at defunct five and dime store TG&Y in 1981.
The Clemson mascot "The Tiger" during a basketball game between the Alabama A&M Bulldogs and the Clemson Tigers on Nov. 21, 2019, at Littlejohn Coliseum in Clemson, SC. (Photo by John Byrum/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
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But then the donations started coming in anyway. As of Tuesday, more than $3,100 had been donated to the page. Grossnickle reached out to the Clemson athletic department to see what they should do with the unexpected funds.
“I would have never imagined people would have donated a single dollar to a page that was obviously a joke,” Grossnickle wrote on Facebook alongside a photo of a check he wrote to Clemson.
But the university won’t be using the money for a new costume. Instead, the money will go to the Tigers United University Consortium, a partnership between Auburn University, Clemson, LSU and the University of Missouri —all schools with tiger mascots — with the goal of saving wild tigers around the world and doubling their population by 2022.
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The consortium thanked Grossnickle for the donation and for helping raise awareness of its tiger conservation efforts.
“One of our goals is to harness the power of the fan base of all of our tiger mascot universities into action and support for wild tigers,” the group wrote on Facebook. “We will designate these funds to our elementary school education program that will launch later this year.”