What in the world is a Catamount? Getting to know Bama’s next opponent Western Carolina

Before Alabama plays Auburn in the 2014 Iron Bowl, it has to play the Western Carolina Catamounts.

While Alabama head coach Nick Saban said, “This is a good little team we’re playing,” on his SEC coaches teleconference, the Catamounts are clearly not very good compared to the No. 1 Crimson Tide. But they are drastically improved from where they once were.

Western Carolina is a team from North Carolina — obviously — and it used to be “where football came to die.” The team hasn’t achieved a winning record since 2005 when the team finished 5-4 and hasn’t won more than five games since 2001. But this year’s squad currently sits at 7-4 and could advance to the FCS Playoffs with a win over the Crimson Tide. Stop laughing, it could happen.

This won’t be too much a problem for Alabama, who will take its starters out midway through the second quarter. So, other than getting to know Alabama’s future starters, intrigue must be found elsewhere, since it probably won’t be on the football field.

The most intriguing thing about this Southern Conference Carolina team is their mascot. Western Carolina is the purple and gold Catamounts. No, not a catapult or a mounted cat. I had no idea what that was so I figured we’d all learn together.

A catamount is defined as any wild cat, like a bobcat, cougar or lynx. The fearsome non-specific mascot was selected in 1933 when the school had an athletic rebranding.

While a catamount itself still doesn’t make much sense if it has to be explained to people, it sure beats the previous alternative.

“At the time, the school was called “Western Carolina Teachers College” and its teams were known as “the Teachers,” according to the school’s website.

Vermont University is the only other NCAA school to use the mascot, but it’s still unique. Western Carolina’s head coach at the time, C.C. Poindexter, preferred the catamount as the mascot over the second place finishing “Mountain Boomers, a small ground squirrel that scampers about the woods and is extremely difficult to catch.”

While Mountain Boomers would be even better and harder to explain, the catamount is a fine mascot for a football team on the rise. Also, how did a catamount win over Mountain Boomers? Maybe they would be better at football if they were a team of scampering ground squirrels.