This one came up over beers recently while watching the Stanley Cup playoffs at a sports bar near UNO's new arena (Baxter Arena) with some other UNO fans I ran into there. It got started after a discussion about how the Lightning ban ANY opposing team gear from their building. That conversation then morphed into what has become this thread topic.
The general consensus was that if this doesn't happen then the NCAA edict requiring UND to change the name in the first place becomes something of a mockery and would outright encourage their fans to continue to do this despite whatever name change is coming.
Another school of thought was that UND, itself, might even lead the way here and ban the practice in their own arena to lead the way. Sadly, the rationale postulated at the table for this one wasn't that UND would necessarily do this for altruistic reasons (although they would presumably say it was) but, rather, for financial ones, since such a ban would seemingly drive a bigger surge in sales of "new" North Dakota gear to their fanbase. If you can't wear banned gear you have to wear something else, obviously.
The conversation went off in this direction because it wasn't lost on any of us how much Fighting Sioux gear is still worn by North Dakota fan (albeit, I readily acknowledge I don't know the extent of their options right now since they are in limbo status). When they were here in late January, it was a rare green-glad person, indeed, that didn't have the logo or the word "Sioux" on their person, somewhere. I mean, I even saw Fighting Sioux gear at the NCAA Regional at Notre Dame while North Dakota was playing at the Fargo NCAA regional.
Since the NCAA has been so militant about eradicating Indian mascots here and at other schools (with the exception of the 5 schools that were granted waivers after approval of their nicknames by the Indians involved) the thinking was that they might subsequently attempt to make people showing up in Fighting Sioux gear in the future the functional and social equivalent of showing up in Klan gear (which literally happened at a high school hockey game played at the Ralph in February of 2013, incidentally) and unilaterally ban it from all NCAA arenas.
This would seem to me to to be a rather unique situation in all these mascot changes that have occurred since the 2005 NCAA edict on Indian mascots and the one with arguably the most acrimony involved.
Of particular interest to me is how North Dakota fans might feel about this and what they think. Has there been any discussion there on this topic, already, amongst you NoDaks/Sundogs/Fighting Hawks/North Stars/Roughriders?
The general consensus was that if this doesn't happen then the NCAA edict requiring UND to change the name in the first place becomes something of a mockery and would outright encourage their fans to continue to do this despite whatever name change is coming.
Another school of thought was that UND, itself, might even lead the way here and ban the practice in their own arena to lead the way. Sadly, the rationale postulated at the table for this one wasn't that UND would necessarily do this for altruistic reasons (although they would presumably say it was) but, rather, for financial ones, since such a ban would seemingly drive a bigger surge in sales of "new" North Dakota gear to their fanbase. If you can't wear banned gear you have to wear something else, obviously.
The conversation went off in this direction because it wasn't lost on any of us how much Fighting Sioux gear is still worn by North Dakota fan (albeit, I readily acknowledge I don't know the extent of their options right now since they are in limbo status). When they were here in late January, it was a rare green-glad person, indeed, that didn't have the logo or the word "Sioux" on their person, somewhere. I mean, I even saw Fighting Sioux gear at the NCAA Regional at Notre Dame while North Dakota was playing at the Fargo NCAA regional.
Since the NCAA has been so militant about eradicating Indian mascots here and at other schools (with the exception of the 5 schools that were granted waivers after approval of their nicknames by the Indians involved) the thinking was that they might subsequently attempt to make people showing up in Fighting Sioux gear in the future the functional and social equivalent of showing up in Klan gear (which literally happened at a high school hockey game played at the Ralph in February of 2013, incidentally) and unilaterally ban it from all NCAA arenas.
This would seem to me to to be a rather unique situation in all these mascot changes that have occurred since the 2005 NCAA edict on Indian mascots and the one with arguably the most acrimony involved.
Of particular interest to me is how North Dakota fans might feel about this and what they think. Has there been any discussion there on this topic, already, amongst you NoDaks/Sundogs/Fighting Hawks/North Stars/Roughriders?
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