Posted on Monday 14 November 2005
According to the NCAA, that is, who ruled that Chief Illiniwek continues to be “hostile and abusive”. In their ever nebulous case against Native American mascots, the NCAA comes up with this gem for their argument du jour:
“By continuing to use Native American nicknames, mascots and imagery, institutions assume responsibility over an environment which they cannot fully control,” Bernard Franklin, NCAA senior vice-president for governance and membership, said in a prepared statement released Friday. “Fans, opponents and others can and will exhibit behaviors that indeed are hostile and abusive to Native Americans.”
This is just super logic by the NCAA. I’m sure that Notre Dame’s opponents never never do anything “hostile and abusive” towards those of Irish descent (not to keep harping on this analogy, but I have yet to hear a valid explanation as to why Notre Dame isn’t part of this witch hunt). And, I wonder what the NCAA has to say about this incident:
On Jan. 18, 1984, Kerr [Steve's dad] was murdered by Islamic militants for the crime of running that school. Two nights later, Steve cried before tipoff and then delivered his best game as an Arizona freshman, making five of seven shots against Arizona State.
He played to escape the pain. He even played the night an ASU crowd hit him with a sick chant of “PLO,” sending Steve into a 20-point first-half rage.
Would they have bowed to these jerks and proposed Steve Kerr sit out so as not to create an environment “hostile and abusive” to those whose parents were murdered by terrorists? If fans want to project a “hostile and abusive” environment about a Native American mascot, how about kicking them out of the game? This makes absolutely no sense to punish Illinois because people can be jerks.
On another note, since the NCAA is a voluntary organization that includes many administrators from public universities…it would be nice for them to publish an itemization of how much it costs for them to devote time to “solving” the mascot problem as opposed to increasing graduation rates, reducing corruption, etc. I wonder if taxpayers would be pleased with how they’ve chosen to spend their time on this matter.
Tags: chief-illiniwek, mascots, native-american-mascots, ncaa, uiuc
Do you think the Somalian pirates are offended by the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers?
At this rate, no one will have a mascot in a few years. Except maybe for the Alabama Crimson Tide. Maybe we should start a list of all the sports teams that couldn’t possibly be deemed hostile and abusive.
I would say the Ohio State Buckeyes, but those little boogers hurt when thrown at you.
After a year like this one I think it would be pretty insensitive for the Carolina Hurricanes to go play any team south of Atlanta.