We sometimes have the opportunity to review workplace injuries that are more, shall we say, unusual given their unique situation. And when a football team’s mascot is hauled off the field in a medical cart after a workplace incident it would represent one of these moments. This past weekend, Chip, the mascot for the University of Colorado Buffalo’s, was injured on the field, and as you might suspect it was a unique accident to say the least.
When attempting to gin up the crowd, he accidentally shot himself with a T-Shirt cannon. The good news is that he, ever so briefly, caught the t-shirt. The bad news is he caught it with his groin.
Hence the need to tote him off with a medical cart. He probably wasn’t up for the long walk back to the locker room – or whatever place you take grown men dressed as cute fuzzy animals who just shot themselves in the family jewels with a cannon designed to launch t-shirts into a crowd.
It is not clear from the video (viewable here– try not to laugh you sick bastards) whether he was holding the gun backwards or if the gun malfunctioned. I suppose in the immediate aftermath that wasn’t the most important thing to determine. The most important thing would be to figure out if there could still be little Buffalo Chip’s in his future. Of course, if he was holding the gun backwards, he might have done us all a favor. I’m not sure we would want more of those little Chip’s running around – sort of Chip’s off the old blockhead, if you get my drift.
At any rate, the good news is that Chip was ultimately OK, and returned to the field later in the game. Either that or they found another guy who could fit in the suit.
The other good news is that Chip’s package wasn’t the only thing crushed on the field that day. His team went on to destroy the New Hampshire Wildcats 45-14. Rumors that the Wildcats were unable to play effectively because they could not control their hysterical laughter have not been confirmed.
For many of you in workers’ compensation, who have likely seen things even weirder than a fully-grown man dressed as a Buffalo Chip launching a high velocity t-shirt into his crotch, this is probably no surprise. It just serves as an example that workplace injuries can happen to anyone at any time.
We are just happy he was not hurt. It would be much harder to make fun of the situation had that not been the case.