In professional sports they generally only appear at home games as they are considered part of the stadium marketing staff. In college, they often travel with the team because they are either part of the athletic department (usually part of the cheer squad) or the school band. I knew a guy who was our college mascot for one year.
Our school hired a new student each year through a fairly informal audition process. Unlike the cheerleaders who had to have some kind of acrobatic or dance background, the main qualities for a uniformed mascot was actually strength and endurance. People don't realize that those costumes sometimes weigh quite a bit and they are very, very, hot inside.
In fact, our school had a main guy who was the mascot and a backup guy just in case the first one needed a break. Another little known fact.... those costumes often REEK... again, imagine wearing an enormous, furry animal head on the sidelines at Arizona... or that Miami bird head on a humid South Florida day. Our school used two mascot costumes...a "game day" one that was cleaned once a year and a "public" one that the mascot wore to outside events.
Schools will often 'rent' out its mascots for alumni events, visits to children's hospitals, etc...In those cases, they use the "nice smelling' costume.
Warning Track Power, a teen is seldom a mascot, the original Phillie Phanatic, David Raymond was out of college and held that job for a decade, and I believe was replaced by a 30 y/o. The original Mr. Met (1962) was a guy in his 20s, and one of the others was a Broadway actor. The mascots are strictly for the kids, and do allot of community work during the off season.
I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.