[UPDATED] Is The Person Inside The Gritty Suit Hot? An Investigation

Mascots have a law among themselves that no one is to see them without their heads on. The person who embodies a mascot is not important; they are simply the bones necessary to make the mascot flesh. This is usually fine and acceptable, except for in this specific situation where I am absolutely convinced that the person inside the Gritty suit is hot in real life.

I am not a Flyers fan, but I am a Gritty fan. I love Gritty’s spooky origin story and I love the erratic, absurdist performance of glee. For the first year or so that Gritty existed, I never though about the person inside the suit. But late last year I was listening to Katie Nolan’s Sports? podcast, and she and her co-host made a couple back-and-forth comments implying that the person inside Gritty is extremely hot. I cannot find the audio for this so it is also possible that this was just my interpretation of a completely innocuous conversation.

For months, I have been thinking about this. Isn’t it a shame to put a hot person inside a mascot outfit where we can’t see them? But then, at the same time, many of the qualities of a mascot–tall, fit enough to run around a stadium, fairly extroverted–are also hot characteristics.

I began asking around. I spoke with 19 people who have met Gritty in person and many more people who just love him. Most agreed: the person inside Gritty is hot and we deserve to see them.

“I’m pretty sure he is [hot], his security guy was kinda hot and for some reason I feel like it’d be weird if the Gritty guy wasn’t hotter?” John Shaw, who lives in Media, Pennsylvania and met Gritty in August, says.

Several people who have been near Gritty and tried to approach him told Unnamed Temporary Sports Blog Dot Com that he blew them off, ran away, or engaged in other elusive behavior often common among hot people.

When Eve Peyser was reporting a profile of Gritty for Vice, she tried to sneak a peek inside their mesh mouth to see the person behind the orange mask, to no avail. Gritty, she chronicles in her story, ran away.

“I never saw him but he gave off hot vibes. I wouldn’t be surprised if the guy in the suit was super hot. He certainly has the confidence of a hot guy,” Peyser says.

In my surveying of 32 people (19 of whom have met Gritty), 27 believe that the person inside is hot. There were four naysayers. (UTSB’s Barry Petchesky believes there is no man inside the Gritty suit.)

Some people, however, do not think that the person inside Gritty is hot. Megan Reynolds, who helped crown Gritty Jezebel’s Fall Crush 2019, says she thinks “They are probably normal hot […] I really imagine the person inside the Gritty suit to look like Gritty.” This incorrect take is also held by UTSB‘s own David Roth.

As of publication, the Philadelphia Flyers have not returned request for comment. We can only take their silence as a confession that the person inside Gritty is extremely hot.

BREAKING NEWS UPDATE: An anonymous and trustworthy source who has seen the person inside the Gritty mascot suit confirms to Unnamed Temporary Sports Blog that they are in fact hot.