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To Our Readers
THE debate over the new University of Hawaii sports logo and football team name is a classic Island Moment. Change is difficult in paradise. After all, change could make things different and we pretty much like where we are, don't we? A Warrior by
any other nameI attended two universities in my youth, Notre Dame and Missouri. The gold ND football helmet bore no logo whatsoever. Despite this alarming logo vacuum, the stadium was sold out every game. The leprechaun mascot was culturally exploitative and insensitive and the team name, Fighting Irish, was a disgraceful slur against Irish Americans everywhere. You had to love 'em.
Mizzou was another matter. The team wore black helmets with a big gold M logo -- Columbia, Mo., didn't have lots of rainbows. At least the logo didn't say "UM."
If they'd tried to reflect the Boone County area's signature natural phenomenon in its name, the team would have called itself the Missouri Chiggers (the chigger is a tiny red bug that leaves a "bite" that's approximately 27 times as itchy as a mosquito's and lasts two weeks to a year).
Despite Central Missouri's dearth of big cats and the well-known aggressiveness of the chigger, conventional Show-Me-State thinking prevailed and our gridiron heroes were the Tigers, rah-rah-RAH!
A smaller school in the Missouri system, the University of Missouri at Rolla, aka the Rolla School of Mines, had an easier time. They fielded teams called the Miners -- a safe and appropriate name, like UH Hilo's Vulcans.
Not so lucky is the University of Delaware. The Fighting Blue Hens, poor boys, are named after a valorous Delaware regiment in the Revolutionary War, who were in turn named after a successful breed of 18th-century cockfight contestants.
Worse, they call their wahine the Lady Blue Hens.
It is vicious defamation for opponents to allege that the red N on the Nebraska football helmets stands for "knowledge." It is true, however, that the Cornhusker football team was originally dubbed the Bug Eaters.
I'll take Warriors any day.
John Flanagan is editor and publisher of the Star-Bulletin.
To reach him call 525-8612, fax to 523-8509, send
e-mail to publisher@starbulletin.com or write to
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, Hawaii 96802.