Frankie the Friar debuted in 1983 with large, googly eyes, a red habit flowing over his wide hips and size 19 shoes. He received a full makeover during the 2009-10 season. SFU athletic director Jim Brazill said Frankie needed to be “modernized” and deserved a new look and custom-produced costume. His previous getup, Brazill said, had been purchased “online at random.”

Brazill — who was the assistant director of athletics overseeing marketing and communications during the Frankie the Friar rebranding — looked at other human mascots for inspiration, including the Providence College friar and the San Diego Padres friar, but he liked the “fierce but still human-like” look of Michigan State’s Sparty.

Brazill also considered changing the mascot at that time to a cardinal (a variation on the friar which would still emphasize the Franciscan university’s ties to the Catholic Church), a Red Flash superhero to correspond to the team’s name, and even a werewolf, derived from the Wolf of Gubbio legend in which Saint Francis made a pact with a wolf to ensure peace in an Italian town.

Ultimately, he stuck with the friar and worked with the athletic department and a local artist to design one slimmer than the Padres’ mascot, with eyebrows and facial expressions loosely like Sparty’s.

“We wanted to take our mascot to the next level,” Brazill said.

But whether Frankie the Friar upped the smiles or spine tingles is still subjective, though Brazill — who finds the Providence friar too intimidating — thinks Frankie “morphed more into a friendlier friar.”

“But I know some people don’t think that it is, necessarily,” he said.