When considering the strongest family legacies in Carolina Football, there are several names that inevitably come to the forefront of fans’ minds. You might first think of the Barth family and their kicking heroics, the tight end/ offensive line tandem of Andy and Brian Chacos, or even the father-son quarterback duo of Mark and Drake Maye (along with Drake’s brothers, Luke and Beau).

However, another familial lineage exists that you might not immediately think of who have been just as an integral part of Carolina Football for nearly a century – the Hogan family.

The Hogan family’s Magnolia View Farm, located just five miles northeast of Kenan Stadium, is home to one of the longest-running traditions in Carolina athletics history—a Dorset horned sheep with painted-Carolina blue horns named Rameses. For four generations, the Hogans have been the caretakers of the live Ram mascot, which made its first appearance at a Carolina sporting event in 1924. The current mascot, Rameses XXII, has been appearing at games since the fall of 2020.

“It’s been the most amazing thing,” said Ann Hogan Leonard, whose late husband, Rob, was one of the primary caretakers for Rameses until his passing in 2010. “Rameses has been this wonderful and unusual tradition for both the university and our family to really cherish.”

The Battering Ram

While Carolina’s athletics teams have competed as the “Tar Heels” since the 1880s, it wasn’t until about four decades later when the idea of a live mascot was first considered.

As the story goes, the year was 1924, and Carolina’s head cheerleader Vic Huggins felt that the Tar Heels needed a live mascot to “compete” alongside other teams in the southeast who had live mascots. Taking his inspiration from Carolina running back Jack “The Battering Ram” Merritt, Huggins petitioned the athletics department for a live ram mascot, which they approved, and provided the $25 to obtain the ram mascot from a farm in Texas.

Following Rameses’ first appearance at a pep rally followed by November football game against the Virginia Military Institute—a game the Tar Heels won 3-0 following a good luck head-rub to the mascot’s horns and subsequent made field goal by kicker Bunn Hackney—Rameses came home with football letterman Henry Hogan, and the ram has been an integral part of both Carolina athletics and the Hogan family ever since.

A Family Affair

Care of Rameses has always been a family affair. Henry Hogan’s brother Glenn was a longtime caretaker, and was succeeded by a nephew and family friend, and now multiple family members are responsible for Rameses’ daily livelihood, both during the football season as well as the off-season. Rameses lives in a pasture at Magnolia View Farm with Ann, who notes that while she “isn’t really a farmer, she just plays one in her daily life.”

“Fortunately, he’s pretty easy to get along with,” Leonard said with a laugh. “He’s a grazer, and we’ve got pasture for him to graze in, so he mostly manages himself. We of course maintain fences and water and hay and things like that but if the ram has plenty of room to move around and good pasture to eat, he’s a pretty happy guy.”

But it’s not just daily maintenance that the Hogan family is responsible for, and Leonard credits her husband’s first cousins Chris Hogan and Don Basnight for much of the effort required to get Rameses ready for gameday in Kenan Stadium. Growing up around the family farm, the three cousins would regularly keep watch over Rameses as pre-teens in the 1970s to prevent instances of “ram-napping.”

“When I was younger, we’d move the ram around to friends’ and family’s places to hide when we felt there was enough rivalry going on to hide him,” Basnight said. “We’d move Rameses from the herd of dairy cows to my uncle’s house to hide him. We’d get to go over and stay in the barn with instructions from my uncle to watch the ram and not let anybody come get him.

“It was a lot of fun and pretty magical. We’d have our sleeping bags, and a few of us had BB guns and we would wait up in the hay loft with anticipation just guarding the ram,” he continued. “Of course, I had a perfect record, and no one got him when I was in the hayloft!”

Over the years, while Rameses has been familiar to Carolina fans, the “process” has changed a little bit over time. “When I was little, the ram that’d we’d take to games was whichever one we could catch! They were pretty feral.” Basnight laughed. “The animals we have now are like big pets. We watch closely, but you can safely take your children up there to kiss and love on Rameses and all will be okay.”

Gameday Ready

To this day, Basnight remains one of Rameses’ primary handlers, and noted that Rameses’ pre-game routine begins several hours before each home game.

“Each home game, we meet out at the farm to attempt to catch him about three hours prior to kickoff,” he said. “You have to use stealth, because I can’t just dive on him and tackle him like some of my nephews can do. We lure him over with some treats and get the rope on him, and he’s cooperative for the most part.”

The handlers then start to brush Rameses’ wool, and make sure he’s looking his best for each gameday, removing sticks and other pieces of debris from the ram’s coat. Luckily, they’re not alone, getting Rameses gameday ready with an assist from a group of dedicated Carolina fans.

“Part of Tar Heel nation knows what we’re doing two or three hours prior to kickoff, and they just come over,” Basnight said. “It’s not uncommon to have 15 to 25 people helping us wash him, rub him down, and get him all clean and shiny.”

The signature blue water-based latex paint, nicknamed “Hogan Blue” by a local hardware store where the Hogan family purchases the paint, comes next. As you might imagine, a three-year old ram doesn’t exactly sit still for the semi-weekly touchups.

“He’s like a kid who doesn’t sit still for the haircut, and he has to wiggle and move around. He doesn’t dislike having the horns painted, he just has no interest in standing still,” Basnight laughed. “There’s a lot of strategies to get paint on him because it’s a beautiful color, and it looks best in gloss paint on the horns, and not on the wool!”

A custom-sewn embroidered blanket completes Rameses’ gameday attire. For years, it has been hand-crafted by Hogan family matriarch Carolyn Hogan. Emblazoned with the classic interlocking NC logo, the blanket is sculpted and contoured with piping, so it lays on Rameses’ back nicely, and has buckles that go around the ram’s belly and neck.

“It’s a labor of love, and we’re starting to evolve that,” said Leonard. “[Carolyn] made coat after coat for him.”

“I’m 65 years old, and I don’t know of anyone else to ever make Rameses a blanket,” Basnight added. “The most recent blanket was made by a local artist in Carrboro who is a family friend and Tar Heel fanatic. She was honored, but definitely intimidated.”

Rameses’ journey to Kenan Stadium then continues in a modified landscape trailer through Carrboro and onto Franklin Street, passing the Ackland Art Museum and Fraternity Court en route to Kenan Stadium. While the journey has been routine for years at this point, a recent change to Kenan Stadium has provided a minor inconvenience to the ram’s gameday experience.

“We do miss the hedges,” Leonard said with a laugh, referencing the boxwood bushes that surrounded the field at Kenan Stadium for years, where Rameses would regularly enjoy a mid-game snack.

A Centennial Celebration

There are only a few college football programs where a live mascot has had as long of a legacy as Rameses has had for Carolina. Rameses has roamed the sidelines in Chapel Hill longer than iconic live mascots including Uga at the University of Georgia, Smokey at the University of Tennessee, and Mike the Tiger at LSU.

When taking Henry Hogan’s football career into account, there has been a member of the Hogan family on the football sidelines for the better part of a century, either playing football for the Tar Heels or walking the sidelines with Rameses, who will celebrate his 100th season as UNC’s mascot in 2024. That legacy is not lost on any member of the Hogan family, and they plan to continue to be Rameses’ caretakers for years to come.

“Recently, we’ve become really devoted to Rameses — raising him and keeping him safe has become our main focus on the farm,” Leonard said. “Which I enjoy. I’ve actually checked in with other family members and asked, ‘Do we still want to do this?’ and they respond with ‘What are you talking about? We still want to do this.’ We’re all in.”

“It’s an outstanding sense of pride,” Basnight said. “I’m sure there’ve been some games over the years that we’ve missed, but that’s close to 800 football games that we’ve been a part of. It’s the blending of these family and Tar Heel traditions and this long history that’s just incredibly rich. For this partnership to have lasted as many years as it has lasted, it’s a remarkable level of support by our university, our community, and our family.”

This story was originally featured in Born & Bred, the magazine exclusive to Rams Club members. Click here to join The Rams Club and receive full copies of every edition, right in your mailbox.