It’s been several years since the NCAA decided to start punishing schools that use tribal mascots and imagery. For the most part, it has shaken itself out and almost everybody has selected a new mascot. They became the Red Wolves, RedHawks, Warhawks, and Mustangs. The Illini are still the Illini, but without the imagery, and the Tribe are still the Tribe, but without the feather. The lone hold-out remains the University of North Dakota, and they’re about to pay a steep price:

When UND was accepted for Big Sky membership in November, the conference’s other colleges believed the issue was settled and UND would retire the nickname, Fullerton said in a letter to Kelley. Should UND keep the Fighting Sioux nickname and Indian head logo, the school could face boycotts from other colleges and cancellations of athletic events, he said.

“Boycotts by individual schools or leagues will certainly have a negative effect on all of your programs, including hockey,” Fullerton wrote. “Couple these issues with postseason restrictions, and we are concerned that this state law has the possibility of destroying Division I athletics at the University of North Dakota.”.

The “individual schools” joining the boycott include the nearby University of Minnesota, an important rival for their hockey program (UND’s primary sport is hockey, their football program being overshadowed by North Dakota State). Losing their spot in the Big Sky Conference is itself quite a big deal, as the Big Sky is one of the better FCS-level conferences and includes some pretty big western schools. The mascot has already cost them a spot in the Summit League and Missouri Valley Football Conference, which the other three Dakota schools, as well as Nebraska-Omaha, will be playing in soon. Their hockey program will also be sidelined from playoffs.

The school had already announced an intent to change mascots, but they were overruled by the state legislature. Also important, some very big UND donors have threatened to stop donating money to the program if they make the change. This puts the university in a really rough place. The legislature and boosters are counting on the NCAA flinching, or else gambling with their entire athletics program to hold on to the tribal connection. Is it worth being the Sioux if nobody will play you?

A lot of this points back to the poor way that the NCAA handled this. The NCAA doesn’t have the authority to make any schools do anything, but they nonetheless played a pretty heavy hand. They allowed waivers that let Florida State, Utah, and others get through if they had the support of one or more tribes that they were representing. But otherwise, they set a pretty high bar for any school representing a tribe with more than one faction. North Dakota actually has the support of one Sioux tribe, and in my mind that ought to be enough. Making their continued use of the name contingent on tribal approval strikes me as a good compromise.

In addition to avoiding this trainwreck, it could have been a truly beneficial exchange. Things worked out very well with Florida State, where the school started changing its iconography and imagery to that of the actual Seminole tribe. Likewise, had UND been required to retain the goodwill of the Sioux, they could have asked for the same. Or money, for that matter. Or admittance and scholarships. This could have been a win-win. The origins of UND’s selection of the Sioux are actually known. They were chosen because the school wanted something that was good at killing Bison, which is the mascot of their in-state rival, and they researched it and determined that the Sioux were great bison-hunters. Putting UND’s specific situation aside, schools with generic names like Indians could conceivably have even be asked to emphasize the name of their sponsoring tribe, which for a lesser-known tribe that would like a higher profile, would be a positive. Especially if it came out that they were good hunters.

When I first started substitute teaching up in Redstone, one of the things I was worried about was, well, Redstoners. The term was introduced to me by my trainer with the Census Bureau to express her disdain to the Redstone hand-off person. A Redstoner is a Redstonian that basically doesn’t have their act together at all. The hand-off person, for instance, was pregnant by one of two men while trying to convince a third man that he was actually the father. She thought that the not-father might buy it because “Redstoners can’t count to nine (months).” It’s a slight at a particular kind of Redstonian, but with the assumption that most of them fit that profile.

Callieites, as a general rule, don’t like Redstone. I do. But even so, it’s hard to deny that there is a certain lack of… ambition… or put-togetherness among much of its population. Barely 20% have college degrees despite the fact that they have a college. It has a high drop-out rate and a median home price of $115,000. Callie looks downright cosmopolitan by example. My wife’s coworker’s husband, Jack Alvarez, is a thrice-successful entrepreneur who had intended to start a business upon arriving, but quickly discovered a distinct lack of human capital (a lack of people in Callie, a lack of people with skills in Redstone).

So I wasn’t sure what to expect when I signed on to teach their young. Particularly given how the Catholic school likely siphons off a lot of those from good families (2/3 of the town is Catholic, 3/4 if you include Greek/Serbian/Eastern Orthodox). But the student population really surprised me. There were certainly some that were obviously future Redstoners, but a lot that weren’t. Their personalities really start to form in junior high where you can start seeing their trajectories. Some are destined to be Redstoners. A lot, though, seem to me the exact kind of people that would become future employees of Jack Alvarez. Do all of them lose all of that in high school? That was a depressing thought. Then I wondered what these people would do professionally, and in a “no spit, spurlock” moment it became all too clear what happens to them.

They leave.

They go off to college, stay wherever they went, or move some place else where there are jobs. Redstone has lost population (and Alexandria gained it) more census counts than not since it’s peak over half a century ago. Some come back and teach (seems almost every teacher I’ve met went through the Redstone schooling system), but if they keep track of how many of the top half of high school graduates end up staying in Redstone, I’d bet the number to be pretty low. The thought isn’t as depressing as when I was wondering if there was some natural regression, but it’s still kind of sad.

Of course, what’s the alternative? Back when I was working in Mocum, Deseret, I wondered aloud on this blog why so many of the people I knew there were still there working for less than $10/hr when their skills could get them so much more elsewhere. I suppose if I taught in Mocum’s schools I would probably consider the tragedy of those who do leave rather than those that chose not to.

Clancy had some paperwork to catch up on, so I watched the Superbowl at a local bar, The Calfway House. I figured, if nothing else, it would help me meet and get to know some of the locals. If we’re going to stay in Callie, one of the things I am going to need to do is get to know people. A bar is probably not the best place to meet likeminded people, but it’s a place, which is better than watching the game at home on my TV.

One of the first people I met was a woman who seemed to be about my age. It turned out that she, like myself, had once lived in Fort Beck, Deseret. I discovered this when someone at the bar was badmouthing the state. It turned out that she was not really “about my age” at all. In fact, the more she and I talked, the older it became apparent she was. At one point, I wanted to ask “Just how old are you, lady?” Her children were out of the house (and I got the impression that they had been for some time) with one of them giving her two grandchildren. I had been under the impression that she had lived in Fort Beck during her college days, but she later said that she lived there from 1968-71, meaning that either she’s nearing sixty or I misunderstood.

I also met a patient of Clancy’s. I found this out the typical way. Basically, he found out that I moved her recently. There was all manner of good food at the Calfway and I asked him if I needed to leave money in a jar for what I ate. Apparently, feeding people (with, did I mention, good food?) is something of a Calfway tradition, and so he knew that I either didn’t live here or that I had moved here recently. So he asked what brought me to Callie, I told him my wife’s work, he asked what she did, I told him that she was a doctor at Dent Hospital, he asked her name, and lo and behold he is a patient. This has happened three or four times since I have arrived. Every conversation unfolding nearly the same way.

I also got to know another guy somewhat, who was about my age and seemed like an interesting guy. The sort of guy I was hoping to meet; the sort of guy I will be able to converse with easily in the future. As often seems to happen, I never did get the guy’s name. Neither of the other two, either (which drove Clancy crazy when she tried to remember the patient). That’ll have to be the next step. Learning their names.

Every year or few, there is a push in football to emphasize calling a particularly penalty because of injuries occurring from a particular type of hit or penalty. This year, in college football, it’s “helmet-to-helmet contact,” though I think they’ve renamed the penalty to something else. With the ramifications of concussions becoming more clear, the concern is understandable.

Unfortunately, player behavior often follows the rules and we’re starting to see that later in the season. Ball-carriers seem to be intentionally lowering their head more frequently, making them harder to hit without getting them in the head. So on at least a couple of occasions, the announcers have mentioned what seemed obvious to me: without hitting the head, there’s simply no way to tackle to runner. They’re all but guaranteed a few extra yards or an extra 15 (plus an automatic first down) if they make the hit anyway. This is, perhaps, a small price to pay for player safety. And it seems to be effective. But I wonder if the end-result isn’t going to be runners retrained to get those extra few yards or even better draw a huge penalty. That would be a huge backfire.

A while back, Transplanted Lawyer complained about the NFL stepping up penalty-calling for injury-causing tackles:

Instead, it’s wimping out and threatening to penalize — including fining and suspending — players who hit each other hard and risk injuring their opponent. There is an inherent risk of injury in this sport, and all sports. People agree to do it anyway — they compete and dedicate their entire lives to giving themselves even an opportunity to do it, because there is a tremendous audience for it — and it’s fun. I don’t mean to suggest that the NFL should go back to the days of leather helmets, no pads, and adopt an eye-gouging rule. There should be reasonable ways to protect players from unnecessary and avoidable kinds of harm. I like that the players wear well-designed helmets, armor, and that there are particular kinds of maneuvers and stunts that are not permitted. It’s a fine line to draw as to what kinds of methods of forcing your opponent to the ground should be permitted and what should not be. The guys who run the show need to do what is reasonable and appropriate to prevent injuries — but they also need to bear in mind that we’re talking about tackle football. There are going to be injuries and I thought everyone knew that.

One of the ironies is that football would likely be safer if they did away with the pads and the helmets. The introduction of these safety measures resulted in players changing the way the hits are made. The illusion of invulnerability has caused players to become more and more reckless. Compare football to rugby, that other tackling sport that doesn’t have the pads, and it’s the former where injuries are far more common. Back when I was in junior high, in the offseason we would play a hybrid rugby-football game without pads and injuries never occurred because the hitter had no more protection than the hittee and so the result was that tackles were made with the aim of getting the player down rather than making sure that they don’t get that extra yard or two.

I’ve heard similar things about how seat belt and safer cars make things more dangerous for pedestrians, though I don’t know how true that is. There’s also a pretty strong argument to be made that the illusion of safety that condoms provide created a culture where people were less cautious about their sexual behavior and this is precisely why unwanted pregnancies and illegitimacy rates climbed ferociously as more and more ways to prevent same have become available.

Not sure if any of you have seen this, but for those who don’t want to view the video, what happened is that a quarterback pretended that the ball needed to be moved 5 yards downfield due to a penalty. While everyone was standing around, he made a break for it and scored the game-winning touchdown.

There was also a recent case when a Cal coach was suspended for having his players fake injury:

Because they run a tempo offense, this sort of thing happens to the Southern Tech Packers with regularity. Pack fans have taken some heat because we’ve come to start booing injured players from certain teams, which is a no-no. It doesn’t help that it often happens with one of Sotech’s rivals, the Piermont Riptide.

Some rivalries are made (due to proximity, usually) and some are born. Sotech and Piermont actually have next to nothing in common as universities (Piermont is a small, private school with a mildly religious background while Sotech is a large public school) who had a rivalry born with a long history of playing one another in games with a lot at stake. Also, Sotech used to be in the habit of running up the score on and on a couple of occasions posted victories with more than 90 points on the board, and Piermont has never forgotten (and they consider it further proof that we are a low-class school). Adding to all of this is an immense dislike by Packer fans of Piermont’s coach, Rod Gandi for reasons I won’t get into.

Anyhow, a couple of seasons ago Piermont inexplicably redesigned their uniforms for a game to emulate ours. Presumably to confuse our players. Typical Gandi, we thought. Then, as we were driving down the field to win the game, over and over again they kept getting “injured” and slowing us down as we were trying to catch their defense off-guard with high-tempo, no-huddle play. Same two players. After the game, Piermont fans were bragging about that it’s not against the rules or anything (actually, as the video demonstrates, it is) and we should just suck it up.

Flash forward to the next season and the our team and our fans are going ballistic every time a player gets hurt. The Piermont fans (on the message board) complained and again suggested that it just showed how low-class our fans were. Others even admitted that they had faked injuries before but that the benefit of the doubt should always go to the limping player. Our fans, obviously, disagreed.

The problem with trick plays like this, whether they are against the rules or not, are that they often lead to things like fans getting angry at injured players for the other team (for the record, one Piermont player we booed was out for the season). I don’t like injured players getting booed. And I want to give every seemingly-injured player the benefit of the doubt. But our coaches and players are left to appeal to the refs every time a player doesn’t get up right until the stretcher comes out and it becomes apparent that there might be a real injury here.

As cute as the high middle school play shown above is, it creates a similar problem. In the event that there is any sort of confusion, what should the defensive players do? If they’re wrong in one direction, it’s a touchdown. If they’re wrong in the other direction, it’s a 15-yard penalty (and possible ejection from the game). Ultimately, it’s not just a trick play, it’s a bad-faith play. A few of the articles talking about the play are saying that it’s a play you only get away with once. Maybe. And maybe some kid will get tackled because some defensive lineman thinks that play has started. In this case, the player walked past the defenders, but next time he may just start walking to the sideline with the ball. Maybe he will genuinely be confused. Maybe not. When there’s not a clear indication of what the defense is supposed to be doing, it’s a recipe for potential problems.

Which is a shame. Cause it really is kind of a cool play.

I’m back at the Copper Cafe. I decided that it was finally time to leave the dog at home, in the yard, alone. To make sure she doesn’t go crazy. I figure that going to Redstone at least gives me the ability to get back quickly if she escapes and someone calls the number on the tag.

I’m here less than half an hour and apparently the Christian-Marxist-Greens are holding their meeting and I’m already getting distracted. This is the second time in a row our paths have converged. To no great surprise, at least a couple of them are college professors. One used to live in Colosse and another in Soundview. They’re discussing the merits of democracy. One of them is trying to reconcile Marxism and democracy. Another is arguing that real democracy doesn’t include votes but rather is a state of consciousness and therefore a nation that looks after its own is more democratic than is a country like the United States wherein we vote but the government is unresponsive to our needs due to the corporate interests.

Next door is a really interesting house. Well, kind of a row-house that was converted from a restaurant or cafe of some sort. It has a really neat patio. Until you look in the windows (or notice the absolute lack of signage) it looks to all the world like a the competing cafe it probably once was. On the other side of the Copper Cafe is an actually residence that’s split into what was split into what must be two pretty small abodes.

The Copper Cafe has no air conditioning, which in the current weather is quite pleasant. This was not the case a couple months ago.

A couple of articles recently have centered around the subject of women’s athletics at the college and professional levels. First, Christina Hoff Summers:

Diana Nyad, sports show host for National Public Radio affiliate KCRW and a celebrated distance swimming champion, was moved to write a special introduction to the latest report: “Women’s athletic skill levels have risen astronomically over the past twenty years … It is time for television news and highlights shows to keep pace with this revolution.” She describes the neglect of women’s sports as “unfathomable and unacceptable.”

But the heavy focus of news and highlights shows on men’s sports is not only fathomable but obvious—that is where the fans are. And that is where advertisers expect to find customers for “male” products such as beer, razors, and cars. Men’s professional sports are a fascination (obsession is more like it) to many millions of men, because they offer extreme competition, performance, and heroics. Women’s professional sports, however skilled and admirable, cannot compare in Promethean drama.

Even women prefer watching male teams. Few women follow the sports pages and ESPN, but many enjoy attending live games—featuring male athletes. According to Sports Business Daily, 31 percent of the NFL’s “avid fans” are women.

By and large, men want to watch men play. Most sports fans are men. But women that are interested in sports usually want to watch what the men are watching. This is true in part because it was likely their father or brother or husband that got them into sports in the first place. So they are introduced primarily to men’s sports. There are some exceptions to this, such as gymnastics and ice-skating, but it still remains generally so.

Once interested in the NBA of NCAA MBB, there’s no reason for them not to branch off to women’s basketball or, for that matter, volleyball. But sports are, generally speaking, a social activity. It’s not as fun to watch a sport that nobody cares about because, apart from Internet chatting, there’s nobody to talk to about it. So while Lacrosse may be a perfectly respectable sport, if you try to talk to anybody about the National Lacrosse League you’re simply going to bore them. I run into the same thing when it comes to non-alumni of Southern Tech University athletics. They’re not national players. Their conference is not one of the three or four premier conferences. Better to be able to talk about the wildly successful Delosa Panthers who draw 80k a game than the Southern Tech Packers who struggle to draw half of that.

That’s why a lot of universities that have difficulty succeeding in football or men’s basketball don’t just switch to another sport that they can dominate. A few have done so, but is the fact that the University of Denver and Alabama-Huntsville have stellar hockey teams something that registers at all? Did you even know that they had really good hockey teams? Or that Cal State-Fullerton has a really good baseball team? Given how hopeless it would be for these universities to build good football programs, going the hockey route may indeed be the best option for them, but collegiate hockey and women’s basketball are never going to really dominate our interest and so it’s not worthwhile to throw a whole lot of investment that way.

Of course, to some extent they don’t have a choice when it comes to women’s basketball or softball or soccer. Title IX requires that they field teams and that these teams are funded adequately. A lot of people like to rip on Title IX, but was (perhaps an overreaching) solution to a real problem. My father-in-law was actually the first coach of the Vandalia Fighting Vandals women’s basketball team many years ago. The pre-T9 accommodations were nothing short of pathetic. Since the reason for college athletics is ostensibly to support student athletes, there’s no reason that they shouldn’t be adequately funded in some relation to the way that men’s athletics are funded. That’s not to say that Title IX couldn’t use some tweaking – I would argue that revenues brought in by men’s sports should count for something – but I consider a lot of the criticisms off-base.

Less off-base, though, than complaints about the media. Other than perhaps soccer, no sport has ever been pumped up by the sports media more than women’s basketball. Indeed, when I was growing up there were three major college sports and women’s basketball was one of them. Now there are two major sports and two secondary ones with women’s basketball in the latter category along with college baseball. A few years ago I wondered exactly what happened to women’s basketball. What I discovered is that there was really a lack of interest. Why did interest decline? I don’t think it did. I think that the interest was never there. ESPN and the like just spent a whole lot of time and effort trying to build the interest. Sports media wants there to be more popular sports. Nothing would please them more than a robust women’s college basketball system because it would give them more stuff to sell you and it would increase leverage with Atlantic 10 men’s basketball to be able to play off Big East women’s basketball against it (“If you don’t take this paltry sum, we’ll just show this other thing instead!”). Attempts by ESPN and Fox Sports and the like to build sport interest are spotty. Particularly women’s sports, though there was a push for hockey a few years back that was unsuccessful as well. The only successful one I can think of is Poker.

The second article (teaser, really) on the subject I’ve read is one about a Division III conference getting in trouble for playing the women’s game before the men’s in double-headers. Like James Joyner, I initially thought the objection was that it was demeaning to the women athletes to have to open up for the men. If that were the case, my response would be the above. While it’s good that women are given an equal chance to play as men, we can’t just pretend that there is or could be equal interest. And having them as the “opening act” probably goes them a greater service than having them play on different nights. I was a JV basketball player at the junior high level and we benefited greatly by playing before the varsity squad and drew better crowds than varsity women’s who played on a different night. As it turns out, that’s only part of the object. The other part, that earlier games cut more into class times than later ones, is a more valid objection. In that case, it might actually be better for them to play on different nights.

ED Kain reports that we have Jimmy Carter to thank for America’s booming beer industry:

To make a long story short, prohibition led to the dismantling of many small breweries around the nation. When prohibition was lifted, government tightly regulated the market, and small scale producers were essentially shut out of the beer market altogether. Regulations imposed at the time greatly benefited the large beer makers. In 1979, Carter deregulated the beer industry, opening back up to craft brewers.

I am personally positively bland in my beer tastes. My “favorite” beer is a Delosa-based outfit (“Wurzbock”) that’s something of a state institution. I put favorite in quotes because I’m not sure if I actually prefer it to Budweiser. Back when I was going to a lot of bars (for music shows) I made the switch to Budweiser simply because it was cheaper. Having moved away from Delosa, I now drink Wurzbock whenever I get back into town simply because it’s less available outside of the state. I say “less available” because according to Wikipedia it’s actually available in over 40 states. I would periodically see Wurzbock trucks when I was in Cascadia. I was tempted to follow one just to see what bar it was headed to. There was another local beer I sometimes drink instead that costs the same as Budweiser, isn’t as good, but is named after my home state. Home field advantage, I guess.

Most of the time, I am fine with Budweiser (or Miller or Coors)g. I’ll drink any non-lite beer. I have some friends that are beer snobs and try to push this really malty stuff on it. I would periodically order Guinness only because I hate it and therefore one glass would last me all night long. For the most part, I am the opposite of a beer snob. Mostly because I don’t really like beer all that much. I had to force myself to like it in the first place (that I would do so astonished many Delosians Deseretians). I did so by basically taking hot days and instead of drinking a coke like I wanted I would just drink a beer. Eventually my mind began associating beer with refreshment. But the effects have sort of worn off as in Arapaho and Cascadia there were never many really hot days. I used the same tactic with diet coke, though that always wears off almost instantly as soon as I drink a couple cans of the real thing.

So unfortunately President Carter’s contribution is more or less lost on me.

Earlier this week I had dinner with my parents and some of their old friends (The Harrells) from before we moved to Delosa thirty or so years ago. Anyhow, I noticed something odd about the way that the waitress spoke. It was hard to pin down, but it seemed like she might be suppressing an accent. She would start out sounding strange and then within a few words it would come out normal. Sorta normal. Not accenty, but a little off.

After I noticed this for the third time or so, I commented on it to Mr. Harrell, who said that he had noticed something similar. However, he thought it was coming from the opposite direction. As in, she was very American trying to affect a foreign accent. She would slip into sounding normal because she would forget she was in accent mode. For some reason, Dad thought she was a he. Well, not entirely, but he was trying to figure out what was so strange about her.

Mr. Harrell was the one that had the courage to ask where she was from. Turns out that he was right and I was wrong. She was from a place in Kingsland that he used to live. They actually talked about it a little while. She was well-enough versed in the area and the local high school that there was no doubt that she was actually from there and not an illegal immigrant from The Czech Republic.

So he was right. Most likely. I still maintain that I might not have been wrong if the accent she was trying to bury was a southern accent. The pronounced potato “poh-tah-to.” My Aunt Evelyn uses the same sound. Po-tah-to instead of potato. Ont instead of ant for aunt. She was raised in the rural south every bit as much as my mother and other aunt were. But from a very young age, she sought to get out. Out of rural. Out of poor. Out of the south. She still lives in the south because she married a (wealthy) southerner who didn’t want to leave, but she is an anglophile that identifies more with Britain than the US in some ways. Along the way, long before I met her and before I was ever born, she slaughtered her accent.

But I think that just further proves that Mr. Harrell is right, though. Most likely she pronounced po-tah-to for the same reason my aunt did, because that’s the way that Americans think Brits pronounce the word. She faltered between this unidentifiably accented voice and this sort of… I don’t know… chrome… voice, but never slipped into a southern voice that I could determine. The chrome voice came off to me like someone trying to sound like an American by way of watching too many movies. But maybe not.

In any event, the speculation passed the time while my folks and the Harrells talked about a bunch of people they knew before I was born or before I turned four.

Going to live music shows means dealing with audiences that are sometimes unpleasant. I have gotten frustrated with audiences in the past for one reason or another. For instance, there are the people that inexplicably decided to go to a music show in order to chat about things while the singer is trying to sing. Or cases of fan-girls going gah-gah and embarassing themselves over an attractive singer. The guy who doesn’t see the “no smoking” sign. And I’m sure there are those that would complain about me obstructing their view.

In only one instance have I been so frustrated with an audience person that I wanted to throttle them.

Shane Cooper is a folk-type singer in Delosa that I stumbled across due to a particularly clever song about Buddhist monks, bubble gum, and bad luck. I listened to more of his stuff and heard a sensitive, insightful, descriptive, and humorous singer. Despite his vocation that puts him on stage in front of crowds every night, Cooper is a serious introvert. It’s hard to get him to talk at all either in person or on stage. I wonder if he took up songwriting because it was the only way that he could communicate.

One time Cooper and this other guy named Max Knowles were doing a show at a local sit-down bar. Knowles was a songwriter who has had songs taken up by Willie Nelson, Dollie Parton, and others that you’ve heard of, though Knowles himself was a guy I’d never heard of until that night. He had a bit of a chip on his shoulder on how some of the songs that were taken up by big artists were reworked and bastardized and he was not shy talking about it. I found it all kind of interesting, but I could see how some might get irritated. Nobody ever said anything to him about it, though.

Cooper, meanwhile, chose this particular night to finally open up. He started actually talking about a song that he wrote about a family friend that took him hunting when he was 10 or so. It’s not my favorite song, but it has more depth than most. The attention to detail and sort of feel of the song told you that this was one of those that was based on something real. And there he was, at the club, actually talking about it. I couldn’t have been more excited.

Then… out of nowhere… at that precise moment, some drunkard in the audience told him to just shut up and sing. Cooper did just that, post-haste. He didn’t need any more excuse than that. The rest of the night the audience tried to prod him into talking again, but he would say “By popular request, I’m just going to shut up and sing.” And he never talked about his songs again.