Columnist Dean Juipe: Rainbow axed; is June next?

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2000 | 10:27 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

Imagine being a big, strong college football player with roots in Northern California and a scholarship to the University of Hawaii.

You're a tough guy playing a vicious sport.

Yet when you go home for the summer months, you get teased. And the central theme of that teasing has nothing to do with Hawaii and its football exploits but everything to do with the school's nickname.

"You play for that gay team," is the ridicule directed your way, even though, statistically, you are unlikely to be gay and it's equally unlikely that no more than one member of the team and its peripheral contingent is gay.

But instead of disregarding the mindless slur, you take offense. You wish the Rainbow Warriors went by some other name and you enlist your coach, June Jones, in a crusade to strike the word "Rainbow" from the sobriquet.

And you find a sympathetic ear in athletic director Hugh Yoshida.

Never has a word as innocuous as "rainbow" caused such a stir. But last week Yoshida announced the school was deleting the word from its nickname, its logo and its (football) uniforms because of its gay connotations.

Puzzling, isn't it?

It was one thing when Indian activists protested the use of Redskins, Chiefs and Braves as nicknames for pro and college sports teams. Along those lines, there was a time when we thought UNLV might be pressured into dropping "Rebels" as its nickname.

But few of us ever gave thought to the University of Hawaii scrapping its brilliant multi-hued emblem simply because the word "rainbow" has a second meaning; if you see a rainbow insignia on a building, for instance, it's a sign that the proprietor and/or clientele is gay or that gays are openly welcomed.

The issue has caused a good deal of confusion at U of H and it elicited some 100 letters to the editor to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin over the weekend. Sixty percent of the writers were peeved, 40 percent agreed it was the thing to do.

Privately at least, it's said that Jones (and his agent, Leigh Steinberg, who does some work for U of H) were the catalysts behind dropping "Rainbow" because the coach was tired of hearing his Northern California recruits complain about it. The players -- who seem a bit too sensitive about this, truth be known -- were exposed to the double-entendre of "rainbow" because of the abnormally high concentration of gays in the Bay Area.

This amusing turn of events proves you never can say you've seen and heard it all.

Adding to the quagmire of emotions is Hawaii's own indecision on the matter, as the school will allow each of its athletic programs to determine whether "Rainbow" stays or goes. The football team, which hosts UNLV Dec. 2, has gone to Warriors only, while the basketball teams will continue to go by Rainbow Warriors and Rainbow Wahine.

If ever a school did anything halfheartedly, this is it, given that Hawaii's annual "Rainbow Classic" basketball tournament will not change names either.

And as odd as this saga appears, it could get stranger yet. What, for instance, will Jones do if his homophobic players insist he change his first name?