Last week, the NCAA announced that it will no longer permit colleges with insensitive nicknames to participate in post-season tournaments. The ban is intended to eliminate what the committee considers to be an abundance of insensitive, Native American logos.

If Florida State ultimately drops the ‘Seminoles’ nickname, it will not, despite the university’s size, be the best example of some school abondaning its mascot because of public pressure. That distinction will always belong to what was probably the most overstated nickname in history: The North Dakota Satans. That’s right: The Satans! At some point in the early 1920s, this small town just beyond Grand Forks, ND must have been searching for an intimidating mascot and went about thirty exits too far. The quest for a scary nickname is supposed to end some where around ‘hawkeyes’ or, at worst, ‘pirates’; not the only being with a realistic chance of defeating God. I have a much more difficult time completing cheers when I’m yelling for a mascot that’s interested in controlling my soul, rather then some bird that just eats mice and rabbits. Clearly, when you call a town meeting to name the local highschool team and walk out with an agreement on ‘Satan’, that meeting spun wildly out of control- although this town would have clearly swept ESPN’s next Capital One Mascot Challenge:

Terrapin			The Devil
	versus

Lastly, can we please stop replying “but the Irish don’t complain about Notre Dame” every time Native American mascots are disccussed? Of course Notre Dame doesn’t offend the Irish- nothing shocks the Irish! Have you ever entered an Irish gift shop- every mug says “I’d rather be drinking whiskey” and most plaques hope for your enemies to “itch” and your girlfriends to never meet your wife. The day we adopt, ‘does it offend the Irish’ as our standard for political correctness, is the day all sensitivity meeetings end with a blowjob joke and shot of whiskey. My girlfriend thought all weddings flowed like a Hallmark card until she attended her first Flannery/Murray wedding, where my great uncle gave a speech that mentioned two STDs by name and then defined a “Cleveland Steamer” before ending with a burp. Moreover- the speech was a hit! Any group that applauds a wedding speech that opens by calling the groom “gay”, can not be trusted to answer sensitivity questions. So, the next time some white guy defends Florida State by saying, “the Irish don’t complain about Notre Dame” or “the Dutch don’t complain about the Vikings”, please remind him that the same, protective group also jokes about Jesus failing to carry a ‘real’ job and their brothers accidentally sleeping with the pet cat.

24/04/2006
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