Saturday, May 16, 2009
Who Cares?
It was reported recently that the Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy had decided to drop the name “Crusaders” for the more politically correct “Lions” as a team mascot name. Gee, that’s original. Put that right up there with the Town Of Weymouth opting to call their high school teams the, oh so boring, “Wildcats” in lieu of the very original abeit silly name “Maroons”. Is the name Maroon offensive? I guess it would be offensive to call the North Quincy High School teams the “Reds”, instead of the “Red Raiders”. So far, we think, they’ve avoided the name change game, mostly because of that dentist (Yacubian) their mascot is modeled after, is still alive and unfazed by the political correctness debate. We’re pretty sure however that some small band of history nuts will come along and challenge that one again too.
The Wahey Boys could generally care less what anyone calls their team. In most of these cases, there is usually a small minority of individuals who feel the need to take a stand on how these names are derived. God knows (I hope) that the first thing us Waheys think of at an Eastern Nazarene soccer game, when the Crusader mascot comes out, is all those atrocities carried out in the year 1200. Did they play soccer back then? And which crusade specifically offends us? Was it the first or the, umm, ninth.
The Washington Redskins have been putting up this silliness for a couple of decades now and most recently won the right in court to keep using the name. Truth is, when it comes to history, nobody really knows how certain names were derived nor do they care. Some cases could be made for the positive use of the term “Redskin”. And has anyone researched the name “Fighting Irish”? Funny, we never hear about that one.
Someday, when all the Lions, Wildcats and Beavers are gone another small group of nobodies will come along and make a name for themselves by saying that people massacred these poor animals and we shouldn’t name our sports teams after them; and weak minded followers will rename their teams the Pansies, Daffodils and Tulips.
POSTED BY STAN at May 16, 2009
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