Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.
The Way I See It
THE University of Hawaii logo issue ricocheted around the mainland like a .22-caliber bullet in a steel drum after the story broke in late July. Logo issue
ricocheting across U.S.Well, don't look now, but ... it's still ricocheting.
Chicago Sun-Times columnist Rick Telander weighed in on it Friday.
His was one of the 10 daily columns posted on the popular www.sportspages.com.
"Bigotry is alive and well in paradise," was the headline on the column, and it tells you one thing for sure.
Remarks made by University of Hawaii athletic director Hugh Yoshida that linked the old Rainbow logo to the gay community certainly have taken on a life of their own.
I don't think school officials ever thought the matter would survive this long. But it would be a real task now to tally the number of media that has checked in on it.
Apparently there are a lot of people who still don't buy Yoshida's insistence that his remark -- "That logo really put a stigma on our program at times in regards to it's part of the gay community, their flags and so forth" -- was not anti-gay.
After the Associated Press sent a story out over the national wire on July 28 that included the quote, the horse was out of the barn.
And that horse has legs.
Among the first to take a crack at the logo issue were some folks with sizeable constituencies: ESPN's Mark Gray, Fox's Jim Rome and the Boston Globe's Nick Cafardo.
More than a few people read the Chicago Sun-Times and the reach of the Internet multiplies the visibility of Telander's words.
An East Coast editor said to me last week, "U of H is going to be Homophobia U for a while."
While that image may be snowballing, football head coach June Jones is becoming rolled into it.
No other sports figure has enjoyed a more pristine rep in these parts for the past year.
But since the logo change is identified with the football team, guilt by association is not surprising.
"Imagine Jones' horror when confronting the possibility that his players were marching into battle under the purported logo of limp-wristedness," lampooned Telander.
TELANDER wrote that UH sports information director Lois Manin told him, "Football has just decided to use 'Warriors.' June Jones wants to use that. Riley Wallace probably won't."
Telander added, "Nor will other less homophobic coaches."
Manin insisted yesterday that she didn't mean that Jones made any public remarks about the old logo's use by the gay community.
But Telander said he was pretty sure that's what she did mean.
The Star-Bulletin has never quoted Jones as saying anything on the issue.
But the feathers are in the wind.
And it's all over a change that might not have been necessary.
"It strikes me there wasn't -- isn't -- a damn thing wrong with a college football team being called the Rainbows," wrote Telander.
"And if South Carolina can be the Gamecocks, well, anything is possible."
He has a point.
"Now Hawaii is stuck with the mighty letter H. Meaning what?" asks Telander.
Well, Ivan P. Hall, in a letter we published Aug. 11, wrote that in Japan, the English capital letter "H" is shorthand slang for "lecher."
"Go, lechers!"
Nah, I don't think we want that.
Pat Bigold has covered sports for daily newspapers
in Hawaii and Massachusetts since 1978.