“I almost fainted; I didn’t realize how much I would sweat in the suit, and I did not properly hydrate and prepare myself for it,” said Connor Crowley ‘17, a UCI business economics graduate who said his time as Peter the Anteater helped jumpstart his career in the sports industry. “I don’t think anyone wanted to be around me after I took the suit off, and that’s because of how smelly and sweaty I was.”
Peter the Anteater has been the official mascot of UC Irvine since 1965. The idea came from two UCI water polo players, Pat Glasgow and Bob Ernst, who were avid fans of Johnny Hart’s comic strip “B.C.,” which featured an anteater who cried “ZOT!” 56% of the student body voted for it, and thus the mascot was born — the first and only of its kind in all of college athletics.
Crowley described being offered the position of Peter as a “moment that changed my whole experience at UC Irvine.”
Crowley was an accidental Peter. He started out as a marketing intern for UCI Athletics. Then, one day, the Athletics department got a package that turned out to be the new Peter the Anteater suit, fresh from the factory. ‘
Crowley was asked to try it on to see how it looked and if there were any defects in it. Immediately after trying it on, his internship supervisor stated that the suit looked good on him and offered him the job.
“She looked at me and said, ‘You actually look pretty good in the suit. Would you like a job?’ And I said, ‘sure.’ And basically, I was Peter the Anteater after that.”
Crowley said Peter became a part of his life and something that he enjoyed doing every day, he saw it as more of a passion than part of his job.
“Peter the Anteater is real. He’s his own character,” Crowley said. “My job was to bring him to life and fill his shoes, and I had a lot of fun doing it.”
Serving as Peter the Anteater helped Crowley start his own career in the sports industry. In his second year as Peter, the UCI men’s basketball team reached the NCAA tournament — a 68 team invite-only tournament at the end of the season composed of the best college basketball teams in the country, commonly referred to as March Madness.
“The UCI Athletics office got a call from Conan O’Brien’s production team and they wanted to do a skit with Peter the Anteater to promote the final four and national championship game of that year and originally I didn’t want to do it. But, when I told that to my supervisors, they said ‘no Connor, we actually want you to do it. You really enjoy being Peter, we think you’d be great at it,’” Crowley said.
Crowley did the snippet with O’Brien as Peter and afterwards, he asked if he could come to the live show. While Crowley didn’t end up going to the live show, he did reach out a couple weeks later asking for an internship within Conan’s production team, and was given the position the following summer.
That role helped him gain another one with Fox Sports, from which he worked his way up to eventually landing a full time role with them. Today, Crowley works as a Motion Graphics Video Producer for the Anaheim Ducks. However, he still looks back fondly on his time as Peter, which helped him get to where he is today.
“I wouldn’t be where I am today without my experience as Peter the Anteater,” Crowley said. “Before that, my freshman year I kind of felt like I didn’t really have a place in the university. I didn’t know where I fit in at all. So, that moment was very much a life changer.”
Crowley said that aside from performing on Conan’s show and going to the NCAA tournament, his favorite part about being Peter the Anteater was the way people reacted to seeing him in costume, and the joy he had for how he made each of them feel.
“Just making people laugh, bringing smiles to the fans and the student’s faces, that was always a highlight and that’s what brought me joy,” Crowley said.
James Huston is a Sports Co-Editor. He can be reached at hustonj@uci.edu.
