Seal Block Week 14: The Grand Finale

Thanks everyone who voted for the Seal Block Top 25 and for everyone who slogged their way through 14 weeks of exciting academic symbolism! Before revealing the final poll results, I'd like to award a couple of special jury prizes. I looked for 126 seals and some schools make it easy to find and some make it almost impossible. The first special prize goes to Buffalo for the most sensible protection of their graphic identity. The gray stripes mean that an interested party can see it clearly, but can't pass it off as official. Emblematic of the wrong way to protect your identity is South Carolina, who has a great seal but makes it impossible for anyone to appreciate it. SC was disqualified from the Top 32 due to this crappiness. (Penn State was also disqualified from the Top 32 because it was, quite literally, the least I could do.) Penn also deserves mention for their clever bait-and-switch: their shield is based on the Penn and Franklin family coats-of-arms and is used on their merchandise. It's widely considered to be their seal, but their actual seal is the seven books of the liberal arts. The trivium and quadrivium: the original 3-4 defense against ignorance.

The second special prize goes to the most badass seals I found while searching. In third place is the U.S. winner, Davidson College, for featuring the brutal murder of a snake. Second place goes to Sweden's Lund University. It's a lion, wearing a crown, holding a frakkin' longsword. He's reading the Cabela's catalog in order to devise the most up-to-date countersafari techniques. "Do you know what those poachers won't be expecting?" he's thinking to himself. "A pride of lions armed with swords!" The year 1666 was a good year to be founded because years containing "666" are inherently badass.

It may be my Canadian jingoism showing when I declare Nova Scotia's Dalhousie University the winner, but no, that's some serious badassery. Dalhousie's named for its founder George Ramsay, 9th Earl of Dalhousie, and their shield and coronet, consisting of the eagle, crown, and unicorn head, comes from the Ramsay family coat of arms. For the Ramsays, the shield is supported by a gryphon and a greyhound, but, at some point, Dalhousie officials said, "To hell with that! That's not badass enough. We're adding some freakin' dragons." And so they did. They also get bonus points for using the only nonconfusing Latin abbreviation of a placename in North America.

 

And now, the 25 best seals in FBS! After the jump! I have written a haiku to celebrate each one.