The creepiest sports mascots represent professional football, basketball, baseball and hockey teams, as well as college sports teams and international competitions. Designed to excite the crowd and entertain fans, these creepy sports mascots miss the mark as they are bizarre, odd or simply scary. Some are downright profane while others are so offbeat that they ride the fine line between funny and freaky.

Masklophobia is the official term for a fear of masks or mascots. Clearly that term was coined after these creepy mascots put fear into the hearts of sports fans old and young. These are the types of mascots that haunt dreams, hide under the bed and creep up on you while you're minding your own business at a sporting event.

Some mascots, especially those representing college teams, are doomed from the get-go as the team nickname does not exactly translate to something that would make a great mascot. Take the Stanford Cardinal Tree or the Ohio State Buckeyes for example. Both schools worship trees and let's face it, trees don't make fierce mascots, they make mascots that are equal parts lame and creepy.

For other mascots, it's the life-like but beyond creepy expression on the mascot's face that makes them something out of a bad horror movie. The Providence College Friar, Dallas Cowboys Rowdy and the King Cake Baby, a strange mascot that pops up around New Orleans, Louisiana, especially as the New Orleans Hornets games, take that level of creepy to the next level.

Whether the mascots are based on crappy things to begin with, like the Xavier University Blue Blob, or are simply a strange combination of a person and a cartoon, like the University of Nebraska Lil' Red, each of these mascots easily qualify as the creepiest out there. Once you see these scary mascots, you'll never look at one the same ever again.