SOAR the Eagle

The brief

In May 2025, The American reached out with an idea nobody had tried. The conference was dropping “Athletic” from its name, modernizing the whole brand under Commissioner Tim Pernetti, and wanted an official mascot at the center of it. No collegiate conference had ever had one.

The character had to be gritty, strong, confident and commanding. Not soft, not cartoonish. The benchmark was Michigan State’s Sparty. He had to hold up on a phone screen, on a shirt, in a video game and as a costume on a stadium concourse. And the standard five to eight week timeline was cut to two.

The build

We worked alongside the conference’s internal creative team and owned the character from first pencil line to final vector.

Black and white sketches locked the pose first: a forward march, head up, built around the conference’s “Built to Rise” idea. Then the rounds. Talons, arm shape, proportions, the costume, the face. Each pass answered specific notes from the conference until the character was theirs as much as ours.

The final Soar is a muscular, athletic eagle in the conference’s red, white and navy, wearing the “A” mark and striped athletic socks that give him personality without turning him into a cartoon. We delivered the football version first, then a basketball version with different attire and a more dynamic pose so one character could cover every sport in the conference.

Final files went out July 9. Soar launched July 21.

The launch

The college sports internet had opinions. Some loved him, some roasted him, and the argument ran for days. That is what a launch is supposed to do.

In the first week, per Commissioner Pernetti at Football Media Days, the rebrand generated more than 1,600 media stories and mentions, 3.5 million views across platforms, and roughly $10 million in earned media value. ESPN, CBS Sports, Bleacher Report, Yahoo Sports, Sportico and UPI all covered it.

Soar is now the first official mascot of a collegiate athletic conference, animated and live. First of his kind.