Today he’s one of the most celebrated college mascots of all time, but 40 years ago when Aubie the Tiger first jumped out of a refrigerator box on the Jordan-Hare 50 yard line, nobody had any idea the impact he would have on the University, its fans and on college sports in general.

“Nobody knew what was going to happen,” said Barry Mask, the man who flirted with heat stroke inside that box at the Auburn-Kansas State game on the scorching afternoon of September 15. “They said, ‘We have a lot of faith in you’ and let me go.”

Football managers placed the box on the center of the field long before kickoff, and after audience interest had piqued, stadium announcer Carl Stephens said, “Introducing a new Auburn tradition, Aubie the Tiger,” the Auburn Marching Band struck up an Earth, Wind and Fire tune, Aubie jumped out of the box and danced like mad, capturing the hearts of Auburn alumni and fans from that moment on.

“The place went nuts,” said Decatur’s Rick Williams, a 1985 Auburn alum who was a Monroe Academy high school senior at the time. “We had never seen anything like it.”

Just shy of his 20th birthday, Aubie had stepped off game day programs and into the games, and the paper tiger was reborn in 3-D.

Aubie was created by Phil Neel of the Birmingham Post-Herald, first appearing on a football program on October 3, 1959, and he quickly became a beloved fixture. Aubie’s career as a cover model coincided with a hot streak for Auburn Football, which won the first nine games with Aubie on the cover.

But what would Auburn fans think of him crawling off the page and prowling the sidelines? In the late 1970s, many colleges displayed live animals at games, tigers, goats, several breeds of dogs, and of course, Auburn had its golden eagle, ironically named “Tiger.” “There were almost no costumed mascots anywhere,” said Danny Richards of Dothan, who served as Aubie III in 1981 and 1982. “At my first mascot camp, there were maybe 20 of us.” That camp was run by Baldwin, Boston College’s anthropomorphic eagle. “Baldy was the only mascot that had been around any time,” Richards said.

The idea to bring Aubie to life began in 1978. Auburn SGA spirit chair James Lloyd wanted to get fans into the stadium earlier on game days. As detailed in an Auburn Alumni Association story last December, he raised the money, and sent famed New York costume house Brooks Van-Horn copies of Neel’s illustrations. The original costume cost $1,350 (adjusted for inflation, less than $6,000). Lloyd wore the new suit on February 28, 1979, at the SEC basketball championships in Birmingham, where Auburn upset Georgia and Vanderbilt to make the semi-finals. Aubie’s power as a good-luck charm was holding.

The last piece of the puzzle was most important: the individual in the suit, and in true Auburn fashion, the man became the first Aubie was an underdog on the brink of a comeback.

Thirty-two people showed up for the first tryout. The top eight or nine were interviewed, then a big announcement was set up at Toomer’s Corner the Thursday before A-Day. “You know how many people showed up to find out who would be the first Aubie?” Mask asked. “Zero.”

In 1979, “I was having a particularly awful April,” said Mask, a Montgomery native. “I tried out for cheerleader, got cut. I tried out for Plainsman, got cut. My girlfriend broke up with me. I was as down in the dumps as possible. My roommate, Jimmy Acres, said ‘They’re going to start a mascot, why don’t you try out?”

Mask said he won with “good old fashioned preparation. I had done theatre in high school, and I was a huge fan of Saturday Night Live, so I had ideas about how to write skits.”

Auburn’s spirit committee wanted a skit every week, and the template was set in Mask’s tryout. “I wrote an elaborate skit that used my friends and all kinds of props,” he said. “I had a big cauldron with a sign that said ‘Opponent Stew,’ with ingredients that represented our rivals, and things like a first down marker.”

“The other reason I won was my sense of humor, which came through in everything Aubie did,” Mask said.

“I didn’t have any mascot characters to look to,” Mask said about creating an Aubie persona in 1979. “I had seen the San Diego Chicken on TV, but not really any other mascot characters.”

“Some people assumed it would just be someone in a suit walking around,” Mask said, “But I decided this was going to be a real character, like Phil Neel created. I decided Aubie should be loveable, a good dancer, a harmless flirt, and a good-natured prankster. And I drew inspiration from the Pink Panther, especially because the costume’s feet.”

“Aubie is in many ways Barry Mask,” said Ken Cope of Memphis, Aubie VI in 1984 and 1985. “A lot of that original personality that has been continued is from Barry’s personality.” (For his part, Mask says Cope was the best-dancing Aubie, because he could break dance.)

Aubie’s notorious antics began with Mask. “I might go up to Toomer’s Corner and direct traffic,” Mask said, “I would go through the drive-through window, anything unexpected and absurd.”

During the Alabama game at Legion Field in 1979, Aubie wore a houndstooth hat and hung out at the goal post near the players’ tunnel. Coach Bryant came within a couple of feet and grunted, “How you doin’, Aubie?” “That is one of my favorite memories,” Mask said.

There was no advance publicity about Aubie’s debut at the 1979 opener against Kansas State. “They left it all up to me, they just said, ‘‘We’re depending on you, son.’”

The Auburn band signed on immediately. Assistant Band Director Dr. Johnny Vinson told Mask to pick “a hip current song” for the band to play as part of the first skit. “I took him at his word,” Mask said, and picked the album cut “Rock That” by Earth, Wind and Fire. “Dr. Vinson wrote an arrangement just for the skit, in about three days,” Mask remembered with amazement and appreciation.

Like many since, the debut Aubie skit began with a refrigerator box. “We painted it, and made handles, with the idea they’d bring it out, everyone would get curious, then Aubie would pop out and surprise everyone.” The night before, Mask got a better idea: put the box out 30 minutes earlier and let the anticipation build for a lot longer.

Mask didn’t realize he was barely going to make it through that first skit because of the heat.

“I was thrilled with how it went, but as I was getting to the tunnel, I began to see stars,” Mask laughed. “I motioned for the managers, and they pulled off the helmet and helped me get cooled off.” Equipment manager Frank Cox had taped a thermometer to Mask’s chest. It read 115 degrees.

Aubie took Auburn fans by storm. “Every game that season more and more people showed up early to games to see what Aubie’s skit would be. Every week he raised the bar.”

Aubie became a college football celebrity overnight, and he won the first of many mascot championships that year.

Word of Aubie got around among Auburn’s rivals, and it shouldn’t have been a surprise that students from Georgia Tech would attempt a high-profile prank. In 1979 the Auburn-Georgia Tech series had been played more than 80 times, and the series was best known for an 1896 prank by Auburn students that became football lore. In the dead of night before the Tech game, Auburn students greased the train tracks, and on game day the Tech team’s train slid right through town. They were so tired from the long walk to the game, Auburn won 45-0.

So it might have been no surprise that in a Tech alum put a $400 bounty on Aubie’s tail. Dr. Vinson remembers that October 20 afternoon at Bobby Dodd Field.

“I looked up, and I saw Aubie running,” Dr. Vinson said. “A full-on run, with Tech students chasing him, and he climbed up into the band to get away from them.” Mask thought he was safe, barricaded behind a row of tuba players, but a Techster climbed under the bleachers and cut Aubie’s tail from below. The story made the Atlanta Journal-Constitution the next day, and the tail was eventually ransomed. “The tail came in the mail that Friday. I sewed it back on with 8-lb. fishing wire on the way to the Wake-Forest game.”

Today nearly 500 anthropomorphic animals and plushy pseudo-Disney characters roam American sidelines, from the University of Louisiana at Monroe’s Ace the Warhawk to Zippy the Kangaroo, from the University of Akron. In many ways, it was Aubie who opened the mascot floodgates. Big Al made his debut at the 1980 Sugar Bowl. Hairy Dawg appeared for the first time in 1981. Florida tried something called Darth Gator for a while. Colleges from all over called Mask for advice on creating a mascot,

Aubie really has won the mascot national championship nearly half the total possible times. Since the Universal Cheerleader Association’s mascot competition went nationwide in 1991, Aubie has won nine of 19 times, and finished second five times. Aubie was one of the three inaugural inductees into the Mascot Hall of Fame in 2006.

Aubie is now a busy goodwill ambassador for Auburn University, with his own support staff, a pictorial calendar, a fundraising idea that goes back to Mask, and every holiday season, Santa Claus takes a break at least one day so children can sit on the lap of Aubie Claus.

“Aubie is the personification of everything good about Auburn,” Mask said.

But “Aubie is especially important to the kids,” said Williams. Thousands of Auburn people proudly share photos and stories on social media of the first time they or their children met Aubie. Williams can chart the course of his daughter’s life in Aubie photos. “The first time I met Aubie was at a basketball game when I was a baby,” said 11-year-old Emma Williams. “I have dozens of photos with Aubie, but I always want more.”

There have been more than 120 Auburn students wear the suit and perform as Aubie, but the character has remained amazingly consistent. “All the kids for all these years have kept the character true,” Mask said.

“My year as Aubie was one of the greatest things that could ever happen to a person,” said Mask, later a member of the state legislature and now a banker in Auburn, but there is one anecdote that stands out particularly.

Only days after winning the Aubie tryout, Mask was scheduled to appearances in the suit during A-Day. At the last minute he realized the first of them was at 8 a.m., a meet-and-greet with donors in Langdon Hall, one of the oldest campus buildings that faces Samford Park.

“I wheeled into this parking space and was trying to get into the suit in the car without anyone seeing me,” Mask recalled. A big blue Cadillac pulled up behind him, and Mask heard the voice of Ralph “Shug” Jordan, who had retired four years earlier after 24 legendary years as Auburn’s head coach, which for an Auburn person is a voice second only to God’s.

“‘Aubie, do you need some help?’ he asked, and I said, ‘Yes, please, Coach, I do.’ And Coach Jordan came over and zipped me up in the Aubie suit the first day I ever wore it. And as we were walking toward Langdon Hall under the oaks, Aubie looked over and said, ‘Coach, can Aubie hold your hand?’ And hand-in-hand, Aubie and Shug Jordan went in to introduce the new mascot for the first time to members of the Auburn Family.

Coach Jordan died a little more than a year later, 22 years after he gave Auburn its first national champion, five months after Aubie won Auburn’s first mascot championship.