Is Indiana’s bison mascot making a return?

The athletic department posted a video teasing… something on its official Twitter account.

Could Indiana get a mascot here soon? Well, maybe.

The Hoosiers have had a few mascots through the years but none have held the same staying power that the bison has. It’s been featured on merchandise and you can’t go a year or two without a site, sometimes us or the venerable Indiana Daily Student, calling for the mascot to make its return to the sidelines.

Well, it seems that’s been heard. The athletic department has been teasing bison content for a while now, most prominently in graphics from the 2025 football schedule release.

Attaching the bison to football makes the most sense, the original was on the sidelines at Memorial Stadium and it’d probably ruffle less feathers as an initial launch than, say, the highly traditional men’s basketball program.

The content shifted a bit this past week when the athletic department dropped a video on its main Twitter account featuring an Oscar-worthy performance from ahem Senior Associate Athletic Director for Strategic Communications/Assembly Hall’s public address voice Jeremy Gray:

That’s an outright hint at a physical mascot rather than one used just for branding. The whole “stored away” theme fits, given the fate of the original bison.

So, time will tell.