It goes without saying that the Minuteman mascot is problematic. It was problematic upon it's inception in 1972, specifically due to the sexist connotations of featuring a male mascot and the violent rhetoric of a weapon-bearing mascot, and in recent years that acknowledgement has only grown. As we recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of Title IX, it is hard to ignore the awkwardness for the women at UMass, who make up a majority of the population, to be represented by a male mascot to which there is no female equivalent, let alone by a male mascot carrying the weight of a violent and morally questionable history. The term 'Minuteman' has been used as recently as 2004, when the Minuteman Project organization was founded by a group of private individuals who sought to extrajudicially monitor the United States–Mexico border's flow of illegal immigrants and build a border wall to stop the influx of immigrants into the US. Needless to say, there are issues here.

BUT there is a solution, a feathery, cat-sized, creature that can unite all gender identities both young and old. The Podokesaurus was discovered in Holyoke Massachusetts in 1910. It was the first dinosaur to be discovered by a female paleontologist, Mignon Talbot, and was officially named the Massachusetts state dinosaur in 2022 by Governor Charlie Baker, soon to be president of the NCAA. UMass fans of all ages would be able to embrace the historical significance and local ties that the Podokesaurus offers, making it the first and only Division I dinosaur mascot in the country.