I've always been behind the nickname change. And I happen to be one of those people that thinks our society has gotten too politically correct. I just don't think that people should be mascots--it doesn't matter if they're Native American tribe names or not. I'm not crazy about the Fighting Irish nickname, either.
AND, there's a little bit of petulance behind my desire to change the nickname, too; namely, the name has stuck around for so long thanks to a rich guy throwing his weight (and cash) around. I think it's wrong that he pretty much bought himself a university. He built a giant hockey rink for the university (a state-run institution) at about the time the nickname debate was really heating up, and he had 3000 logos put inside the arena. Tell me that doesn't sound like a big, "F-U, I've got money and I'll do what I want"); Three thousand logos? Seriously?
And, when the NCAA expressed an opinion about logos, the rich guy said he'd tear the place down before he'd let them remove the logos (the rich guy has since died, so who knows how his estate will handle this thing).
Reminds me of the little guy from the Family Guy series, who's always running around saying, "Wanna fight about it?"
And yeah, I DO want to fight about it. Even if you have no opinion on whether the logos and the nickname are disrespectful, you want to fight about it just to show this Vegas moneyman that he can't buy a state-run university and he can't buy a town. C'mon people! What happened to that frontier spirit? That "we're earthy, hardworking people that cobbled a good life out of a cruel but beautiful land, and we aren't going to take any guff from some rich city folk and kneel down before the almighty buck"?
Sure, hockey's important around here. But so is the country farmer sense of pride, and I can't believe so many locals are kow-towing to some rich guy who didn't even stick around but took off to Vegas.
I understand that the nickname has history. I understand it is important to people (hey, I went to that college--I had the logo on a bumper sticker on my car, too). But it's time to move on to bigger and brighter things. And it's time to show that people in North Dakota can't be bought. And certainly not bought by anyone who left us and moved to Vegas.
