Hoosiers Ate My Brain

The NCAA Must Be Joking...

But, sadly, I know they're not. In a world of college sports where recruitment violations and substance abuse occur (but are denied strongly) and athletic departments skirt academic rules, the NCAA has found a way to dictate their righteous opinion on their member schools. As if their member schools didn't already have enough to worry about including donors who earmark large gifts for sports to the detriment of liberal arts and an NCAA who can't enforce half of the rules it makes. But, damn it, someone on their executive committee was offended! Offended we tell you! And...And! And since the NCAA has no control over what members schools actually do, well, by golly, they've found a way to control what they can! Unbelievable. They've banned schools with Indian named mascots from post-season play, but they can't find out why the star quarterback drives a brand new Escalade.

I love college sports and am a proud alumni of a school that fields nationally known teams and athletes in more NCAA sports than any other school in its conference (including football, basketball, baseball, wrestling, golf, tennis, equestrian, rowing, sailing, and many more less well known sports). (Oh, no! We have to change our mascot name from the "Cowboys" it might offend the "Farmers!" Oh, wait we were the Aggies before, oh, now I'm confused. Well, make the University of Oklahoma change its mascot name instead. "Sooners" were criminals! They were land run jumpers! You can't have school mascots named after criminals -- no more post-season play for you!)

Knowing what monumental tasks the NCAA faces in enforcement, events management, sponsorship recruitment, legal organization, and many other valuable areas, I question this decision. Don't they have enough to do rather than serve as arbiters of taste? Mascots should be a school's individual decision made at a local, regional and state level. It's not an NCAA affair. And while the NCAA has made this ruling insisting it's still the school's choice, they've inserted themselves well enough by eliminating that school from a national state of postseason play. Somewhere, it lost its vision. The NCAA exists to serve its member schools, not dictate the rules based on their own perceived version of right or wrong.

NCAA Bans Indian Nicknames In Tournaments
'Hostile, Abusive' Monikers To Disappear After Feb. 1

INDIANAPOLIS -- The NCAA has banned the use of American Indian mascots by sports teams during its postseason tournaments but will not prohibit them otherwise.
The NCAA's Executive Committee decided this week the organization doesn't have the authority to bar Indian mascots by individual schools.

NCAA Committee chairman Walter Harrison says nicknames or mascots deemed "hostile or abusive" would not be allowed by teams on their uniforms or other clothing with any NCAA tournament after Feb. 1.

The guidelines for which logos and nicknames would be considered "hostile or abusive" haven't been announced.

Among the schools that have changed nicknames in recent years -- Saint John's from Redmen to Red Storm and Marquette from Warriors to Golden Eagles.

posted by braingirl @ 3:46 PM