The Greatest Icon of Sports Entertainment:

It was 1974. The Dallas Cowboys' cheerleaders were still new and controversial; professional wrestling existed only in an amateurish form; and, aside from the games themselves and maybe some live organ muisic, there was little entertainment value in sports like basketball and baseball.

But things would change when a representative from rock music station KGB went to San Diego State University looking for somebody to wear a rented chicken suit at the zoo as a one-week promotional gimmick. There the representative found Ted Giannoulas, a young student who agreed to wear the chicken suit for $2 an hour. Giannoulas was hired without an interview and without an audition. Ironically, as the Chicken's official biography claims, KGB could have auditioned all of San Diego and not found a more talented mascot.



But we're getting ahead of ourselves. After his stint at the zoo was over, Giannoulas persuaded the officials at KGB to use him in the chicken suit at San Diego Padres baseball games, thus becoming the first live-action mascot in the history of professional sports.

That is just the very beginning of a great American success story. The San Diego Chicken has now made an estimated seventeen thousand appearances, signed over two million autographs, revolutionized sports entertainment marketing and simply made a lot of people feel good from back in the 1970's to the present. Ted Giannoulas' Chicken was a ground-breaking pioneer, but as a mascot, the Chicken is still as important as ever at times like these when the average person has trouble relating to professional athletes.


See the Official Site of The Famous Chicken.