NFL moguls living in a different century
Team mascots and traditional chants are a vital part of the history of college and professional teams alike but enlightened attitudes have scant regard for folksy heritage.
The Native American seems to provide the most fodder for teams that like their opponents to feel intimidated although, admittedly, it has been quite a while since baseball’s Cleveland Indians managed to unsettle any of the sides that have come to visit them.
The Atlanta Braves do a little better on that score but their dominance during the 1990s was probably more to do with good pitching than the gimmicky “Tomahawk Chop”, a droning chant employed by Braves fans as they rally their side to turn the screw. It’s a tradition rooted not in reality but in the problematic portrayal of good Cowboys and bad Indians in Hollywood Westerns. Otherwise, a harmless enough routine.
A lot more impressive is the spectacle that has for almost 40 years defined the build-up to a Florida State Seminoles football game whenever they’re playing at home. After a few decades of questionable mascots, the late 1970s saw a switch to a character called Osceola (played by different Native American men over the years) who, to this day, rides his horse Renegade to the centre of the pitch and plants a burning spear in the ground, driving the Tallahassee crowds into delirium.
It is done as respectfully as possible and with such gusto that local tribes have argued vociferously for its retention.
But that sort of approval is not always possible and by far the most prominent and troublesome nickname has been held by the storied NFL team that has represented Washington DC for over 70 years, the Redskins.
Next week, a case will be brought to the United States Patent and Trademark Office that could potentially impact greatly on a brand which, despite a lack of success on the field, is in the top five of richest sporting clubs in the world, according to the most recent research by Forbes.
Only Manchester United, Real Madrid, the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Yankees are ahead of the Redskins, whose controversial owner Dan Snyder has aggressively pursued the money-spinning potential of the modern NFL franchise, squeezing dollars out of every nook and cranny.
The lawsuit is an offshoot from a previously failed bid that lapsed in 2009 and if the plaintiffs are successful, the team could still use the name but the NFL would stand to lose revenue from the sale of team merchandise.
A symposium was recently held in DC at the National Museum of the American Indian titled “Racist Stereotypes and Cultural Appropriation in American Sports”. Washington Post sports columnist Mike Wise, who was a panellist at the symposium, spoke for many in US sports media who can’t think of an argument for the status quo.
“I think when people say Redskins we hear cup or bedspread (the lucrative souvenir items, in other words),” he said. “The sound is the same, but when you go to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota that name is equivalent to the ‘N’ word.”
Meanwhile, the students at Cooperstown High School in Upstate New York have just this month voted to discard the nickname they had in common with Washington. No longer will the Redskins represent the hometown of James Fenimore Cooper, the man who wrote the classic novel, The Last of the Mohicans.
Frank Cloutier of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe in Michigan recently told ESPN that he does not object to any inoffensive use of Native American terms by sporting organisations.
“Our position is that if it’s not derogatory and it’s being used appropriately, with an opportunity to share or cross-share our culture, then it’s fine,” he said. “There’s nothing derogatory about ‘Warriors’ or ‘Braves’. There’s nothing derogatory about ‘Indian’. But terms like ‘Redskin’ or ‘Half-Breed’, those are derogatory terms to us.”
During an ESPN debate on the topic last week, four-time PGA Tour winner Notah Begay, himself a Native American, described the use of the Redskins moniker as “institutionalised degradation of an ethnic minority”.
As is the case with all these things, there will come a point when people won’t be able to believe what was once deemed acceptable.
For now though, it seems tragically inevitable that change will always move much slower for billion-dollar enterprises than it does for 21st century schoolkids.
*john.w.riordan@gmail.com Twitter: JohnWRiordan
