Best high school mascot in Nebraska: Top 10 candidates

From Jeffs to Pendragons to Mighty Bunnies, meet the best high school mascots in Nebraska

Regardless of where they live, sports fans are familiar with (and often bristle at) the Crimson Tide.

But the Crimson Pride? They're distinctly Nebraskan and proudly defended by Rocky the Lion in Omaha.

SBLive Sports' love for unique mascots with interesting back stories has been well documented.

We've crowned Hodags and Imps the past couple of years in national high school mascot contests, and now we're taking a spin through every state.

Over the next couple of months we'll go from Alabama through Wyoming featuring each state's best high school mascots, and then give readers a chance to vote for their favorite. Our Nebraska poll will post Nov. 2 on highschool.si.com and stay open through Nov. 9.

Here are the top 10 high school mascots in Nebraska:

Columbus Discoverers

“Discoverers” isn’t a word you see every day, and it’s a perfect choice for Columbus High School even though it’s a couple-thousand miles away from where Columbus did his discovering.

Creighton Prep Junior Jays

Nebraska has lots of high school Bluejays, but Creighton Prep gets a little creative to take a next-in-line position behind the Creighton Bluejays in the college ranks. They’re the only Junior Jays in the country. 

Fairbury Jeffs

Fairbury is in Jefferson County, but that’s the smaller part of the story behind the Jeffs. The reference to a mostly forgotten comic strip called "Mutt and Jeff" that the school adopted when having a human mascot became popular.

Gothenburg Swedes

Gothenburg, Sweden, and Gothenburg, Nebraska, are the only two Gothenburgs in the world. But Gothenburg, Sweden, does not seem to have a high school that calls themselves the Gothenburg Nebraskans.

Holdrege Dusters

Holdrege had no nickname until 1924, when a momentous football game happened against rival Lexington. The low-scoring game was played in the middle of a dust storm, and the school yearbook referred to the football team as the Dusters the following year. All the school’s other sports teams eventually followed.

Lincoln Links

No, Legend of Zelda fans, not that Link. These Links form a symbolic figure used to bring Lincoln teams good luck in their pursuit of success. The four Links on a statue outside the school, donated in 1970, stand for Tradition, Diversity, Excellence and Unity.

Omaha Benson Mighty Bunnies

Omaha Benson High School moved in the 1920s to a field formerly loaded with bunnies, and its mascot choice would foreshadow a 1975 Monty Python scene showing just how mighty bunnies can be.

Ord Chanticleers

There’s only one Chanticleers in the college ranks (Coastal Carolina), and Ord has the nickname to itself among U.S. high schools. “Chanticleer” is an old English word for “chicken” and a name commonly appearing in old fables.

Pender Pendragons

The Pendragon refers to a dragon leader of other dragons in Celtic mythology. And in medieval times, there were leaders of clans. The leaders of clans were dragons, and the leaders of all the clans were called pendragons. “The pendragon was kind of like the leader of leaders,” Jason Dolliver, the Pender Public Schools superintendent, told the Norfolk Daily News in 2014.

Roncalli Catholic Crimson Pride

Not to be confused with the Crimson Tide, Roncalli Catholic has the only Crimson Pride in the nation among U.S. high schools. Its mascot is Rocky the Lion.

Ord High School in Nebraska shares the same mascot as Coastal Carolina in the college ranks — the Chanticleer / David Yeazell-USA TODAY Sports

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-- Mike Swanson | swanson@scorebooklive.com | @sblivesports