The Sixers Mascot is a blue dog named Franklin

It's been a dark few years for Sixers fans who love men in body suits. Hip-Hop is, has been, will always be, dead. Here's Liberty Ballers' hare enthusiast Tanner Steidel on that fateful day:

Personally, I was never a big fan of him in the first place. They brought him on during the Iverson era to add a little flashiness and hipness that Iverson brought with his style of play. I could never really grasp what a bunny had to do with anything remotely related to the franchise, but that's just me. The charade was definitely running its course, and the new ownership made the right call in euthanizing (or something like that) the rabbit (I wonder how PETA feels about this?).

So here we are, over three years and a few moose sketchings later, with a new mascot. Zach Lowe reports with the scoop of the MF century that the Sixers have chosen -- with the help of a thousand kids in the Delaware Valley -- a dog. A dawg. A dogg. A Road Dogg. A blue dog named after Ben Franklin as their new mascot.

Do kids care about Ben Franklin? Of course they do, kids love the Enlightenment. Or maybe they just like a blue fuzzy thing and dogs are cool. If we're going with Franklin, I wouldn't have minded co-opting this Franklin from Nickelodeon, but that's just me being a 90s kid. I still would've preferred Sixers Phanatic -- not Big Shot, because we already have one of those, and he's not quite as amorphous -- but maybe people would have revolted. Specifically Phillies fans who only like the Phillies, who have nothing else going for them and should probably give the Phanatic a year off and just let Grady Sizemore run around Ashburn Alley.

This is clearly something the new ownership has wanted to change since they got here. Even though Adam Aron isn't as vocal as he used to be (missing you, @SixersCEOAdam), this has his fingerprints all over it. And actually the Sixers tapping into the city's revolutionary-time roots isn't a bad idea. Maybe there can even be a National Treasure-esque scavenger hunt through Philadelphia looking for the Silence Dogood letters while Nicolas Cage gets dressed up as Franklin and Sean Bean shoots poorly-aimed tanking bullets at him.

It should be noted that Ben Franklin is actually from Boston, and moved to Philly when he was 17. But that's cool, because Michael Carter-Williams and Nerlens Noel pretty much did the same thing.

Are you excited about this? Does this make you want to go to games more? Does this make you want to have kids? Does this make you want to get a dog? Are you worried that if you get a dog he'll grow to be Franklin-sized and upset your houseguests by knocking popcorn out of their hands and obstructing their view? Will Franklin ever get electrocuted by accident? Are we just gonna gloss over the fact that Ben Franklin owned slaves? Do dog slaves exist?