Maybe the NCAA is pulling a bait and switch. Maybe there is a huge scandal ready to be exposed in college sports, if only the light was shone in the right direction. Maybe not, because this stroke of genius was four years in the making, but it seems that the paper pushers behind this either didn’t have enough work or didn’t want to spend the time working on things like steroids or illegal recruiting.
The NCAA set new rules that slams roughly 18 schools for having Indian mascots or Indian names in their team name. Penalties include banning these schools from hosting post season play, banning Indian mascots from performing at tournament games, and the recommendation that other schools do not schedule games with the offending schools. That last sounds both draconian and laughable, but Iowa and Wisconsin already follow such a policy.
To make things worse, the lithmus test for punishment is any school with a nickname or logo that is considered racially or ethnically hostile or abusive. Taking four years to come up with such a weak, inconclusive test is just pathetic. The simple concept of treating each case equally must have never been the goal in the first place.
Wally Hall, a sports columnist who runs an editoral piece in my local Arkansas Democrat Gazette, points out that the team name “Fighting Illini” is going to be out, but “Fighting Irish” is just fine. That makes a lot of sense, right?
The SI.com article points out that “one school, North Carolina-Pembroke — which uses the nickname Braves — will also be exempted because Brand [Myles Brand, NCAA president] said the school has historically had a high percentage of students, more than 20 percent, who are American Indians.” I can’t even understand what precedent that exemption sets up. Is it
a) It is ok to have a racially or ethnically hostile nickname if you have enough Indian students.
b) It isn’t offensive if the students really are Indians.
c) Insert your own leap of logic here.
Yeah, I just heard about this today. There are also schools (some directional Michigan school I think…Cent. Mich., West. Mich…something like that) that tried to change their name and the local Indian tribe told them not to because they considered it an honor to be used as their logo. So are they exempt from the ban because they have a note from their local tribe saying it’s ok? The NCAA is the most corrupt entity this side of wrestling or boxing anyway. This is probably pretty far down the list of things that don’t make sense, right there along with the BCS and the fact that every school that’s any good at all at sports clearly pays half their players and lets them not attend real classes.