Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2005 | 9:15 a.m.
Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4088.
Schools affected by the NCAA's ruling to abolish the use of American Indian-related nicknames in NCAA tournament play:
Let's see, according to new NCAA rules announced Friday, Notre Dame will still be allowed to wear uniforms that say "FIGHTING IRISH" across the chest while Utah will be asked to remove "UTES" from theirs.
Forgive me if I don't understand the logic.
In an attempt to abolish nicknames that are considered "hostile and abusive," the NCAA has declared that as of February, Florida State and Illinois and any of its other 18 members that use an American Indian nickname will not be allowed to display them at championship tournaments. And that mascots such as the Illini's -- er, Illinois' -- Chief Illiniwek will not be allowed to perform, which is to say, get in the way during timeouts.
But in that the ruling only applies to American Indian nicknames, Notre Dame needn't fret about having to change its blatantly stereotypical moniker -- if you think everybody of Irish descent can fight than you obviously didn't follow the boxing career of Sean O'Grady -- to something a little less offensive, such as the Golden Domers or Fumbling Fausts.
Similarly, San Diego State can remain the Aztecs, Penn can continue to call itself the Quakers and Louisiana-Lafayette can keep Ragin' Cajuns. But Utah is one of those that will probably be purchasing new uniforms soon.
"They might as well drop the name and hold a name-the-team contest among the fans out there," Vernon Bellecourt, president of the National Council on Racism in Sports and Media, told the Salt Lake Tribune.
While schools such as Utah and Florida State have the support of the tribes they claim to honor, that won't get them a reprieve from the NCAA come tournament time.
In fact, schools that refuse to change their name to something more politically correct will not be allowed to host postseason tournaments. Which is probably the main reason that schools such as Utah will probably be changing their nicknames sooner instead of later.
The Huntsman Center, Utah's basketball arena, hosted the famous 1979 Final Four featuring Magic Johnson and Larry Bird and ranks second among the all-time NCAA tournament venues with 75 games having been played there. Next spring, the arena will be within two games of the record held by Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City after it hosts six first- and second-round games.
In addition, the NCAA has held seven women's gymnastics championships at Huntsman.
That's a lot of cocktail parties and golf tournaments hosted by officials wearing bright red blazers that would go away if Utah refuses to play the nickname game.
"We have a reputation as a school that hosts a lot of NCAA championships, and we do enjoy that and we do get a lot of good publicity from it with the fans and media," Utah associate athletic director Liz Abel told the Tribune. "If all of this holds up ... I'd have to think we're going to need to look into maybe changing (the nickname), because we do like to host those events."
Abel's remark about the guideline "holding up" might be based on news that Florida State already is threatening to sue the NCAA to maintain using "Seminoles" as its nickname. So the next time Chief Osceola, the FSU mascot, brandishes his trademark spear, it might be at NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis with a legal document attached.
T.K. Wetherell, the FSU president, said the school will do everything within its power to assure the tomahawk chop and accompanying war chant do not join Burt Reynolds' jersey in mothballs.
"I intend to pursue all legal avenues to ensure that this unacceptable decision is overturned, and that this university will forever be associated with the unconquered spirit of the Seminole Tribe of Florida," Wetherell said in a statement.
What he should have said is that the university will forever be associated with the unconquered spirit of making money by selling sweatshirts with "SEMINOLES" sewn on the chest. Then I might have believed him.
But this ruling may just be just the tip of the iceberg, which, come to think of it, might make a pretty good mascot for the University of North Dakota, once it sees fit to dropping "Fighting Sioux."
I mean, how long before somebody complains about such innocuous-appearing nicknames as Jayhawks (an abolitionist guerilla of Missouri and Kansas during the Civil War era) or even Rebels, as in the UNLV version. Old-timers will recall that the Pride of Maryland Parkway once wore football helmets adorned with the Confederate flag, a symbol which many Americans find offensive. Even today, Hey Reb, the school's mascot, sports a bushy white mustache that smacks of a plantation owner.
Is that being too sensitive? Probably. But what's in a nickname, anyway? It's not like Stanford took a turn for the worse when it dropped "Indians" for "Cardinal" and adopted a kitschy evergreen tree as its mascot.
Besides, whereas nicknames serve to eliminate confusion in pro sports cities with multiple franchises, they are redundant in college. You don't even need them to cheer. Have you ever been to a game in Laramie when the crowd starts chanting W-Y-O? It's not because the Wyoming faithful don't know how to spell Cowboys (I think).
Lack of an official nickname hasn't precluded Manchester United, the British soccer side, from becoming rich and famous, so what would be so terrible with just plain Nebraska, Michigan or Southern Cal?
T.K. Wetherell is obviously a brilliant mind and/or one of FSU football coach Bobby Bowden's fraternity brothers, or he wouldn't have gotten where he is. But regardless of what he says, I don't think every time Stuart Scott or one of the other ego maniacs at ESPN refers to Florida State as "The 'Noles" it pays homage to the Seminole tribe.
I don't think the real Osceola ever referred to his men as 'Noles while fighting relocation to Oklahoma during the Second Seminole War. In fact, I'm not even sure Deion Sanders referred to his teammates as 'Noles.
The battle over offensive nicknames has been raging since 1969 when Dartmouth set the precedent by changing its nickname from Indians to Big Green. So you would think that one of these days the NCAA and the bastions of higher learning it represents will move on to more weighty issues, such as the graduation rate of its athlete-students who play basketball.
But at least one Utah fan and Ute tribal member was able to see a little humor in the ongoing debate on whether schools such as Utah should be required to change their nicknames.
"I think they should be able to use it," Doyle Conetah, 14, said, "as long as they keep winning."
archive
