The visible Otto the Orange is a blur of spastic energy — pinballing through the Carrier Dome stands, bouncing around bleachers and somersaulting with cheerleaders, his face caught in a perpetual sly smirk.

Meanwhile, the invisible Otto — the student sworn to secrecy in the costume like some kind of citrusy comic book hero —is sweltering under the suit, which Aaron Frank, a former Otto, paralleled to “being in a 130-degree sauna with no air and 100 percent humidity.”

“It’s like being Peter Parker and Spiderman,” said Frank, who served as Otto during 2010 and 2011. “With great power comes great responsibility. Being in the field and seeing 30,000 people, you know at least one is watching. You go from zero to 3,000 in half a second.”

If Otto on the outside always had a big grin plastered to his face, so did Frank, who said smiling widely kept his energy levels up in a costume that, on a few occasions, pushed him toward the brink of fainting.

“One game, I did six or seven somersaults in a row, and almost passed out,” Frank said.

Otto’s name has become synonymous with all things Orange sports culture, but more than 22 years since sporting the suit, Mitch Messinger is still waiting on his royalty check.

“A group of us came up with the name at cheerleading camp in Tennessee,” said Messinger, who went out for the Otto gig in 1990, “The name spread like wildfire.”

Before Messinger first enlisted in the Otto ranks, Otto was known eponymously as just “The Orange.” The mascots christened each new Orange costume with nicknames: Clyde was one costume. Woody was another.

When Messinger and his concurrent costume-sporters earned the chance to name the newest costume, they kicked around the idea of naming it Opie.

“We thought that it might rhyme with dopey,” Messinger said.

So the group of mascots named the costume Otto, and the name just stuck. The anonymity of wearing the rotund Otto get-up — current mascots aren’t allowed to divulge their Orange alter ego — allowed for Messinger to play up the persona.

Though Messinger kept his lips tight about his role, he said he’d wear Syracuse boxers over Otto’s usual shorts to let those who knew his secret know that he was the one in the costume. That included his grandparents, who he fondly recalls seeing him be Otto at a Big East tournament.

“I could be as wild or crazy as I wanted to be,” he said. “As Otto, I could just go up to a stranger and mess up their hair. If I did that as Mitch, I’d probably go to jail.”

Even though Otto’s identity is shaded in an aura of mystery, Doug Serton, a 2004 alumnus, said it’s not exactly the best-kept secret on campus.

“The pie in the sky tale is that the mascot is supposed to be secret,” Serton said. “But you carry the suit to Manley. People know.”

Serton’s Otto experience was more trial by fire than anything else — a sports enthusiast back at school early from break, and with the cheerleading captain living on his floor, he was asked to jump into the suit for a Saturday night basketball game.

“I had no idea what I was doing,” Serton admitted.

Serton spent 2003 as Otto, the same year as Syracuse’s magical run through the NCAA national tournament. During a post-championship pep rally in the Dome, Serton-as-Otto outran most members of the basketball team during their victory lap around the Dome, walking with Carmelo Anthony as he held the trophy.

“I remember the feeling of walking out of the tunnel for the first time,” Serton said. “You have tunnel vision, so you can’t see the magnitude of the Dome.”

When Orange fans catch a glance of Otto careening around the Dome, they see the vibrant mascot up to his usual antics. When Otto looks back, well, odds are he can’t see much at all.

“It’s nearly impossible to see from the nose down,” said Alaina Mallette, a 2013 alumna who spent a stint as Otto, “If anyone was shorter than 5 feet tall, I couldn’t see. If Otto’s bumping into things, it’s not us being silly.”

Mallette, an orientation leader whose friend convinced her to audition for Otto, was sitting in Thornden Park on a warm spring day when she was blindsided by a surprise stop from the mascot, who walked over to hand her a slip of paper. The note remarked Otto’s congratulations on Mallette joining the team.

It wasn’t until mascot camp — yes, that’s a real thing — when Mallette first sported the costume. Mascot camp was a crash course on all things Otto; Mallette said she watched videos, trained and learned how to keep in character.

“Under the costume, I was really hot and nervous,” she said. “Nervous came first, and hot came later.”

Like Messinger, Mallette tried impressing her family with her Otto antics. She said her mom’s favorite of her signature Otto moves was when she stole a cheerleader’s pompoms and held them against Otto’s back end, which, well, made it look like Otto was having some seriously glittery bowel movements.

“It would look like Otto was pooping pompoms,” she said, laughing.

When game days roll around, past mascots still watch the visible Otto racing around the Dome — the invisible Otto embracing the zaniness that comes with embodying a sentient, smiling orange.

“I still absolutely watch Otto at games,” Messinger said. “My 10-year-old daughter knows daddy was Otto, so I point to her, ‘Look Jillian, that’s what Daddy used to do.’”

Published on March 20, 2014 at 12:04 am

Contact Erik: ervanrhe@syr.edu | @therealvandyman