It’s always interesting to see what the University of Maryland considers worthy of its homepage real estate. National basketball championships, Nobel Prize winners, these are obvious choices. But once in a while they (OIT? Administration? marketing?) make a bold move and give an entire box to things like the Capitol One Mascot showdown.
For those of you who haven’t voted for Testudo yet, go ahead and do so and get it out of your system so I can continue my rant.
Now, I expect this contest to get passed around the fraternity listserv and some AIM profiles, but I didn’t really expect my alma mater to promote it to its front page with more flair than a number of major university achievements are given. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen this same lame contest for five years now, and you always have to vote for EVERY SINGLE MATCHUP when you clearly only care about your school’s mascot (thus ensuring that 5 out of every 6 votes is someone randomly clicking so they can submit).
But the system’s integrity aside, don’t you think it’s beneath UMD to have this as a major part of the main site? I mean this is Capital One’s dream come true. They buy the rights to our mascots and then this “contest” gets them, a credit card company, on the front page of a major university’s website, space they could never have outright purchased no matter how much they offered. Never mind the fact that the average American already has over $8,500 in credit card debt or that they love targeting students.
Oh, and Testudo’s video sucks. He’s got much better moves than what appears to be drunk disco dancing.
update: They’ve since taken it down. But still.