When you love something, you memorialize it. And Chris Kourvelas loved his years inside the suit as Memphis Tigers mascot Pouncer.

Want to know how much? Ask him to roll up his left sleeve.

There, in bright orange, blue and black ink, is his tattooed tribute — the mascot’s likeness and name filling up his left bicep.

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He is forever loyal to the brand. What he wouldn’t give for one more run as Pouncer at a game that mattered.

Because time slips away.

So, go back in time.

To 2000: John Calipari’s first game as Tigers basketball coach at The Pyramid, and Kourvelas’ first game as Pouncer.

To 2003: Kourvelas as Pouncer at the New Orleans Bowl when the University of Memphis ended a 32-year bowl drought by beating North Texas.

To 2008: Kourvelas as Pouncer at the Final Four — which was great until, well, it wasn’t.

“I still miss it,” he says. “And I’m 42 years old.”

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The city’s most beloved mascots – from Pouncer to Grizz to Rockey the Rockin’ Redbird — are ageless and able to transcend the generations, whether bouncing off a trampoline for a slam dunk or dancing atop a dugout.

But in real time, it’s an incognito gig for the costumed performers.

Or at least it is designed to be.

Chris Pegg, 53, was Pouncer at the U of M. He spent seven summers as Chief Chickasaw for the Memphis Chicks at old Tim McCarver Stadium, and then, from 1998 to 2016, was Rockey — the unmistakable face of the Memphis Redbirds baseball franchise.

“If somebody said, ‘Are you Rockey?’ I’d say, ‘No, but I know Rockey very well,’” Pegg says.

The man who brings Grizz to life —and he’s going into his 18th season as the Grizzlies’ mischievous blue bear— is still on the job, so he can’t be named. But he concedes the secret of his identity is not nearly what it once was.

He says he married a Grizz Girl, naturally, and that the whole leave-Grizz-at-the-altar debacle with character Hallie Beary and alter-ego/traitor Natch is now just old business.

Grizz even has a family, saying, “I’m providing for the cubs just fine.”

Rockey the Redbird is also remaining anonymous, but Memphis Redbirds President Craig Unger admits there are many identities inside the costume (different actors, if you will).

“Take a cue from Disney, right?” Unger says. “You never know who Mickey is. And there are some kids who are afraid of Rockey, so you don’t want to traumatize people with his head coming off.

“So, yeah, they’ve got to stay in character. And birds don’t talk, after all.”

‘Passing the torch’

Neither do bears and tigers. But Kourvelas found his voice, in a sense, when he became Pouncer.

“Growing up, I was kind of reserved and quiet,” he says. “This helped me come out of my shell.”

That’s what going inside the suit can do. Anonymity is freedom.

Terez Wilson already felt free.

“I was a class clown,” says Wilson, who grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas. “I was voted most spirited guy in my high school.”

Wilson, 37, was the first Black person to play Pouncer and followed Kourvelas, earning an in-state scholarship from 2005 to 2009. He came to U of M with every intention of walking on the baseball team. When that didn’t work out, he threw himself into leading cheers in the stands at Tiger athletic events. Kourvelas, then still in the suit, noticed him and identified him as a possible successor.

“It’s like you’re passing the torch to somebody,” says Kourvelas, who played Pouncer as both an undergraduate and graduate student and today lives in Bossier City, Louisiana, where he teaches history and coaches middle school basketball.

Wilson credits Kourvelas for teaching him “how to be a cartoon.”

To be the cartoon he wanted to be, though, Wilson needed more flexibility inside the costume. With the help of Pegg — who in 2000 started his own company, Mascot Central — Wilson removed the hoops insert that gave Pouncer his Phillie Phanatic-like belly and gained more mobility.

“I could do the splits,” Wilson says. “I could jump off things.”

He also changed out the helmet inside the costume, just as Pegg had done as Rockey the Redbird, so the head would turn more easily and there would be better sight lines from within the suit.

Costume designing has also evolved to the point that the suit no longer has to fit close to the person inside, which is a huge help on those 100-degree days.

On a recent muggy night at AutoZone Park, the current Rockey — feeling rather like a rotisserie Redbird — retreated to the team’s air-conditioned offices after just the second inning for a short break.

Apart from costume changes, Wilson gave Pouncer more of an attitude. When things went wrong at a football game, he would bang his huge Tiger head against the goal post. When the 2008 NCAA Tournament arrived, Wilson would throw on a referee shirt and walk around the court with a “blind cane” after an official’s call went against the Tigers.

He says he won a mascot performance competition at the 2008 Final Four.

And now it’s over.

Today, at age 37, Wilson runs his own State Farm agency. He is married and has two children.

“I knew I wasn’t going to do it forever, but for a while, it was difficult to come to games,” he says, adding that he is now a season ticket holder for football and men’s basketball.

Thankfully, Pouncer’s connections with former Tigers basketball players are paying off.

“Some of them are my customers,” Wilson says.

An actual career path

Pegg was Pouncer from 1991 to 1993. The notion that climbing into an animal/cartoon costume could be a legitimate career really didn’t come to him until a year or two later when he met Dave Raymond, who was the original Phillie Phanatic.

“We sat down, and he talked to me about the business side,” says Pegg, who in 1997 did one season as “Rowdy,” the Dallas Cowboys mascot, only to find the pay and support from the organization lacking.

Grizz trained under Bob Woolf, the Phoenix Suns Gorilla. The Suns marketed the Gorilla as being “5-foot-ape.” 

“He, like, invented the dunk off a trampoline,” Grizz says. “People came to the game just to see him.”

With the Grizzlies, the man inside the costume found a perfect partner in former game operations director Jason Potter. Both men are wrestling fans, so it was natural to lean into stunts like jumping off ladders and putting villains through tables.

They also developed fun storylines, such as making Natch the Bear — the name was inspired by the first bear at the Memphis Zoo — a close friend who betrays Grizz on more than one occasion.

The creation of Super Grizz also enabled the main character to essentially have a split personality: Grizz as a lovable rascal who was always quick with a pie or cake to the face of, say, a supposed Lakers fan. And Super Grizz as the vengeance-seeking alter ego at his best in the playoffs.

“I knew I wasn’t going to do it forever, but for a while, it was difficult to come to games.”

Terez Wilson
Former Pouncer

So it’s no surprise that the man who played both still counts Game 6 of the 2013 series against the Los Angeles Clippers as a cherished moment.

That was when Super Grizz, with an ‘S’ on his chest, scaled a 25-foot ladder above the elevated house band stage inside FedExForum and unfurled a banner that read, “Finish them!”

The music playing? “Whoop That Trick,” also known to Grizzlies fans as “Whoop That Clip.”

“The place just exploded,” Super Grizz says. “And it was completely organic.

“I get goosebumps just thinking about it. It’s still out there on YouTube. I go back probably twice a year and watch it just because it’s so magical.”

‘No one knows you’re in there’

Redbirds manager Ben Johnson was carrying the night’s lineup card out to home plate for the pre-game conference with umpires.

Rockey was ready with a feathery fist bump.

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“Hey, Rockey,” Johnson said, “how we doing today?”

Rockey’s answer: a spirited nod of head and beak.

Johnson, 42, has been around all manner of mascot. When he played for the Padres, it was the famous San Diego Chicken. When he played in New York, he was teammates, you might say, with Mr. Met.

“The San Diego Chicken was always great,” Johnson says. “He had this gig where he would have a visiting player dance with him a bit. And in the end, he’d throw his glove over the fence.”

He also gives props to Grizz for his “360 trampoline dunks,” and then Johnson makes a confession: He wouldn’t mind trading places with Rockey for an inning.

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Or slipping into that furry bear suit over at FedExForum.

“I’ve always kinda wanted to do it, man,” Johnson says. “Because here’s the cool thing: No one knows that you’re in there.

“You can kinda just be the person you maybe really want to be, that you can’t be.”

Risks that come with the territory

The NBA playoffs are more physical than the regular season. Miami Heat mascot Burnie learned this when MMA fighter Conor McGregor laid him out with one punch at center court, then hit him again after he was on the ground — a fun skit apparently taken too far.

The Burnie performer inside the costume reportedly was treated at an emergency room and released.

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So, yes, the profession has its hazards.

“It’s a dangerous job,” says Unger, saying they have had wrestling nights and try to make sure the Rockey performer is up for the task. Rockey always wins, of course.

Pegg says he has never been hurt but was once thankful for the help of a West Memphis cop who pulled away an unruly man at a Redbirds game.

“You have little kids come and pull your tail,” adds former Pouncer Chris Kourvelas. “I never had my tail ripped off or nothing. But you’d have drunk college guys at games come up and hit you in the head as hard as they could.”

At the New Orleans Bowl, Kourvelas says he was blindsided by North Texas mascot Scrappy The Eagle. No pre-planned skit, just an attack.

“I wasn’t going to just take it,” he says, and he has the picture of Pouncer pinning Scrappy on the turf to prove it.

‘That was you’

Being on scholarship as Pouncer allowed Terez Wilson to stay in school here.

“It was a godsend,” he says. “It’s why I was passionate. To me, being the mascot was the start of everything, including my business at State Farm.”

Kourvelas had hoped to do like Pegg and make mascot performance a career. It didn’t happen. That is why it has been important to him that his 9-year-old son, Louie, learn about his history as Pouncer.

So, they have gone to Tigers games, and Louie has had his picture taken with the present Pouncer. Louie always looks for the mascot when he and dad are watching games on TV: “Dad, there’s Pouncer! That was you!”

Alas, past tense.

They were good times. Especially when Kourvelas needed a minute to forget about the exams that were in front of him or some other stressor.

“An escape,” he says. “I wasn’t me anymore. I was Pouncer.”

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Says Pegg: “It’s like an addiction.”

The man who is Grizz is now in his early 40s. He’s had some bone breaks and sprains along the way, but he does martial arts as a hobby. That keeps him in game shape. He has no intention of stepping away anytime soon.

He doesn’t worry, after almost two decades as Grizz, about “losing” himself to his craft.

“I have a lot of passion outside the costume,” he says. “I have seen it happen. I don’t want to say mascots went down a dark path, but some have lost their identity because of the character.”

And really, is it so far-fetched?

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For as Redbirds manager Ben Johnson said, being in the costume is a chance to “be the person maybe you really want to be that you can’t be.”

As Rockey the Rockin’ Redbird, Chris Pegg was beloved and a symbol of the city. In costume, he signed autographs and posed for photos. He was the guest of honor at special events, ranging from grand openings to birthdays to bar mitzvahs.

On the Fourth of July, he would ride around the ballpark on a four-wheeler standing up out of the seat and waving the American flag as Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” played. People would rise to honor the flag and the United States.

“I’d get teary-eyed,” he says.

Then there were those nights early in AutoZone Park’s life when the place was packed: Rockey was a conductor atop the dugout, waving his arms and needing but a single red finger pointed skyward to induce the crowd to cheer louder and louder and louder.

“It’s powerful,” says Pegg, now 53 and several years removed from commanding such an audience. “It’s being on stage and everybody looking at you. It’s very powerful. You miss it; you totally miss it.”