Say Anything Blog

Katherine Kersten, writing in the Minneapolis Star Tribue:

An Associated Press story in the Star Tribune reported that a U of M policy discouraging the school’s athletic teams from competing against UND in any sport except hockey “will stand.” The U’s Advisory Committee on Athletics had said in February that it would reconsider the policy, according to the AP. But Douglas Hartmann, the committee’s chairman, “now says that won’t happen.”

The Gophers will continue to play other teams with Indian names. In November, the men’s basketball team will take on the Central Michigan Chippewas and the Florida State Seminoles. (FSU’s mascot is a white guy in full war paint who brandishes a spear on horseback.) In December, the Gophers women’s basketball team will meet the Utah Utes.

These schools, unlike UND, have received the blessing of the NCAA to keep their Indian team names.

North Dakotans may find the U of M’s policy on the Fighting Sioux surprising. They probably just don’t understand how enlightened folks make decisions on such matters. UND’s fans likely think it’s enough that players and the community are inspired by the tradition of the Fighting Sioux name, which has a 75-year history, many Indian supporters and a beautiful logo of a proud Sioux warrior designed by an Indian artist.

But then, you’d expect that hokey “school spirit” stuff from simple country folk whose idea of progress involves improving sugar beet yields.

Just so you have this straight, the “principled” stand the University of Minnesota is taking on the University of North Dakota’s nickname means that they won’t be playing any “Fighting Sioux” teams (except the hockey team, since that’s a Division 1 team and UofM makes a lot of money off that rivalry), but they will be playing other teams with Indian nicknames since the NCAA has decided (in some arbitrary and completely unfathomable fashion) that those Indian nicknames aren’t offensive.

Makes perfect sense, right?

One wonders if the NCAA hasn’t decided to execute its no Indian nicknames policy so harshly on UND as a way of sitting on the fence a bit on the issue.  After all, their zeal in going after UND can be used to mask their leniency with bigger-market teams that make the NCAA more money like the Florida Seminoles, etc.