The NMSU Logo Debacle That Should’ve Never Been

Lawsuit settled. But New Mexico State University should have backed down long before. It should have admitted it ripped off Oklahoma State’s mascot “image” … many years ago.
Here’s the settlement: NMSU will pay OSU $10 a year – forever – and OSU will drop its lawsuit over: “You Stinkin’ Aggies Stole Our Image” logo.
It was an OSU logo (that cowboy guy) way back when OSU was Oklahoma A&M. And I believe NMSU was New Mexico A&M then, too, when it introduced a mirror-image the A&Mers called “Pistol Pete.”
Most people around here know the “image of “Pistol Pete” as the gun-packing cowboy with big chaps … and, yes, it really is a “mirror image” of Oklahoma State’s cowboy guy.
Actually, both kinda look like Snidley Whiplash, the arch villain who tied the fair maiden to the railroad tracks back in Victorian lore. But both images forego Snidley’s black stovepipe hat and instead are donned with a big cowboy hat.
Both logos are ugly! Get an image, already! I don’t think any kid chooses a Pistol Pete or an OSU “cowboy” costume on Halloween. NMSU has agreed to the $10-a-year settlement in exchange for being able to sell or gift no more than 3,000 “Classic Aggie” (Pistol Pete) images a year. And the sales have to be from NMSU’s bookstore or its online site. But the university’s teams feel free to use that logo.
Anyway, I don’t think people will play like its “Black Friday” and camp out at the bookstore for any of the 3,000 available “Classic Aggie” logo stuff. Get a new logo, Aggies. Scrub “Classic Aggie” (save ten bucks a year). Be Aggies, you Aggies. How about using a green chili pepper as the official mascot logo? Because, if you use a red chile pepper the old El Paso Diablos could sue for copying their “image.”