confusion sets in

Does anybody know what a Hawkeye is? Thanks to a post on Drinkn From a Fire Hose, we know the origin of the word, but what is a Hawkeye exactly?

I understand that Herky the Hawk is just a character that acts as a mascot for the Iowa Hawkeyes, similar to a elementary school girls volleyball team using the class fish as a mascot. It doesn't have to make sense, it just needs to be something that the team can count on for good luck. That's fine. That doesn't bother me, he is a Hawk, not a Hawkeye. I also understand that the "tiger hawk" is their logo. I must say it is a rather douchey logo at that:



Anyways, I am still lost on what a Hawkeye actually is. In CBS' "Most Dominant College Mascot on Earth" polls, they put the Hawkeye in the "predator" division.

Are they smoking crack? They are getting it confused with it's on-field representative, Herky the Hawk. Freaking CBS. How can a bird's eyeball possibly be a predator? What is it a threat too? If anything the eyelids are more of a predator than they eye ball, they can at leat block things.

By the way -- who's winning that contest? Oh, that's right, your very own ISU Cyclones.

Moving on, if you read DFaFH's article, it says that there was a hero in The Last of the Mohicans named Hawkeye or something. If I remember right, there was also a guy on M.A.S.H. named Hawkeye. What do these two things have in common?

Well neither of the Hawkeye's were actually birds, let alone worthy of being mascots. They were names. Hell they could have been called the Iowa Walter's, or the Iowa Billy Bob's for all that's worth. But if I had to pick between an Indian and Captain Pierce, I would probably go with the nurse-bangin doctor:



Still. We get nowhere. Wiki will tell you that there were a plethora of comic book characters named Hawkeye, a videocassette brand named Hawkeye, along with a long list of other worthless things. Still no definition of what a Hawkeye is. That can bring me to only one conclusion:

I think the public needs to know that there is absolutely no such thing AS A HAWKEYE, thus the state of Iowa should be renamed "The Cyclone State" Although I think our football team will take care of getting that name on our own this fall.

You want a Hawkeye logo? Here you go, the eye of a Hawk. It's even got the black and gold thing going to save money on apparel: