Hey Big Ten. . . Have You Ever Heard Of The Pot Calling The Kettle Black?

It's Minnesota and Wisconsin so far. And the stand they are taking is that they won't play the games they don't have to. So conference games, they will play. Which includes North Dakota, because they play in the WCHA. (By the way, all of this was mentioned in the previous postings.) It's more aimed at not having cross country and swimming meets with North Dakota.

It's dumb to come out and announce it as a policy. Because, yes, it looks like everyone is ignoring the elephant in the room. And it looks like PC in the extreme. (Which is the real point why any bunk you read about Bob Knight as a great candidate for the Gophers men's basketball job was bunk. Knight wouldn't get past that PC test.)

As my boss, a UND hockey fan, pointed out when he went to the Gophers-Sioux hockey game last weekend, the U is more than happy not to play against an offensive nickname in the minor sports. And they are more than happy to sell Indian logo merchandise when the hockey teams go at it.

 

Several of the conference schools are putting a lot of pressure on Illinois to change their nickname, too, because of the alleged insensitivity (although the Chief is rather, um, over-the-top, his costume is created and donated to the school by the Sioux, so somebody must be OK with it).

It's typical knee-jerk "I need to have a symbol of 'oppressed people' to wrap my arms around so I can feel like I'm changing the world" college campus liberalism at work. Of course, they rarely figure out whether or not the so-called "oppressed" people have a problem with it in the first place.

The University of Wisconsin -- a place where Karl Marx would've been called a right-wing nut -- has had such a policy for a few years. The university admin forced the school to drop an already-scheduled football home-and-home with Utah because of the policy (they talked Indiana into picking up the contract), even though the Ute tribe seems to have no problem with the school using the nickname. Of course, there was the flap over not letting the Mountaineer bring his musket into Camp Randall (IIRC, they don't allow Illiniwek into the stadium, either).

If Minnesota and Wisconsin really wanted to take a stand, they should just leave the Big Ten.

 

Since this thread has touched on the NCAA, the "hostile and abusive" nickname thing, and college hockey, I submit this bit of information, courtesy of Inside College Hockey....

"The NCAA, the organization continues to use one hand to stab its member institutions in the back while grabbing money with the other, announcing this week that the title sponsor of the Frozen Four Skills Challenge is – tada! – Pontiac, the automobile manufacturer named after a 19th century Indian leader. The bottom line here is the NCAA is opposed to Native American names and imagery it deems “hostile and offensive,” except when cash accompanies said names and imagery."

 

Uhhh, Sioux means "snake" in Lakota.

So it's a perjorative, one would imagine.

 

Please, the Big Ten has been doing this crap for nearly a decade now. Iowa signed a home-and-home with a school with an Native American mascot, and then decided to pull it and refused to play them. But when it comes to Illinois, Iowa said that they had to play the Illini because they were conference foes and they were obligated by the Big Ten to play them.

The NCAA means well, but with as many tools running the show with Miles, if they think that they can punish schools like UND and Illinois, this will be an unresolved situations for years to come.

 

Good call. Then beg Notre Dame to join.

 

If that's true, then you'd better tell the Native Americans who run these web sites that they are insulting themselves.


www.sioux.org/

http://www.lakhota.com/home.htm

http://www.lakotamall.com/oglalasiouxtribe/

http://www.rosebudsiouxtribe-nsn.gov/

http://www.ccsmdc.org/

http://www.siouxpottery.com/

I could easily go on. But the point is made, I believe.