Woody Cavenaugh

The news and web have been full of articles about how this tiny little office called The Office of Diversity and Inclusion in the NCAA is forcing colleges to change long standing team names. Its a nice racket really. They sit back with a cup of coffee and wait for the phone to ring. When the phone rings, they take down what the caller is offended at and then they start the process of banning whatever it was that the caller found offending.

So apparently what started the whole ban the Native American team name thing was a couple of offended folks. Remember that many schools have support from the local tribes whose names they borrowed. But it doesn't matter, somewhere, someone is offended, and thus there will be no NCAA teams named for Native American tribes. Perhaps the offended are trying to bury the past, I don't know.

What I do know is that I find the "Fighting Irish of Notre Dame" offensive, for implying that my people are drunken brawlers from France and I promise you as soon as I sober up, I'm marching up there and I'm going to give them all a what for up the side of their heads. And I'm taking my whole Chaomhánach clan with me. Or at the very least the ones close by who are sober enough to travel and stout enough to swing a shillelagh. Notre Dame indeed...

But while we're at it, if we are going to do it we have to be fair to all cultures, all tribes, all groups. If we're doing away with the Native American Names and the Irish Names (Yes, the Celtics too), we have to go after the Spartans, Trojans, and Cretans. (From Crete, what were you thinking?)

We should probably avoid using things like the Steelers, Packers, Pirates, Oilers, Patriots and Yankies too. There are probably generations of steel workers, cheese packers, republicans , privateers, revolutionaries, and carpet baggers who don't want to be associated with a team who has a week line and no quarterback to speak of (or good pitcher where it applies).

A whole bunch of schools are using animal names and while this seems like a good idea on the surface what with paying respect to the animal's major strenghts and all, you just can't do it. All the hippies at Greenpeace and PETA have strong opinions about animals and they don't want their names being used to represent steriod packed, no necked, neanderthols in televised war games. Hippies are just funny like that. But they have rights to, and we can't ignore that. Everytime I eat a steak I always raise my glass to the PETA people, for without them, the meat wouldn't not be nearly as sweet.

Well how about the Quakers, Decons, Puritians, Pilgrims, Angels, Olympians, Saints, Titans? If I have to even say it I will be forced to pray for you.

Now when I thought of the Browns, White Socks, Reds, Red Socks, and Blues, I thought we had something good, but we can't use these either. Nope, this descriminates against the colorblind. You can toss all these names to the wayside.

As I have learned in my research, names have been a whole lot worse in the past. We've given up the Dons, The Bridegrooms, The Ambrose Jellymakers (I'm not making that up), the Ballhawgs, the Beaneaters (I wish I were making that up), the Colt .45s, the Gunslingers, the Gwizzlies (aww, isn't that cute!) the Innocents and the long strange list goes on.

So what's left, I mean if you can't call your team the Ambrose Jellymakers what can you call them. I've been kicking around the idea of calling teams either adjectives, adverbs, or abstract concepts. The Heat, the Cold, the Courage, the Lost, the Around, the Heartfelt, or the Abstracts (though we might get in trouble with certain artist.) So I'm stumped. It sounds like the NCAA either needs to put up or shut up. Do you think we can call a team the "Shut the *&%^$ ups"?