Go Governors!

When I was in high school my grandfather told me two cheers from when he was in school. They were:

"Chew tobacca, chew tobacca, chew tobacca spit! We think your team ain't worth _____!"

"Pork chop, pork chop, greasy, greasy! We can beat your team easy, easy!"

That went well with the two names he thought we should name children if they were born female: Alice Ophelia and Mary Luzinka.

I am not quite sure why I thought of that, but it probably has to do with these two cheers for APSU:

"Let's go Peay! Let's go Peay!" and "The Fly is open! Let's go Peay!"

Governors may be one of the more original, but appropriate mascots. The school is named after Governor Austin Peay, who was from the area, practiced law in Clarksville and apparently was very interested in education in Tennessee. To name a teacher's college in his hometown after him was quite appropriate. And while the name 'Governors' doesn't necessarily strike fear in the hearts of the opposition, I'm not quite sure which mascot names do these days.

Everybody is so concerned with making sure no one is offended by their mascots and the images of the athletic teams that borrowing the fearsome traits of anyone or anything is a questionable action. No wonder we have the Banana Slugs and the Artichokes and the Blue Hose. [No offense, Kate.]

I defend the use of the Braves by Atlanta in this way: the team began in Boston. This was one of those teams which couldn't settle on a mascot. They were the Pilgrims, the Doves, the Bees. It's almost a miracle that they settled on anything. The original Boston Braves were the citizens who dressed up as Indians and threw tea out into the harbor to protest the tax on it. They weren't real Indians, but they were a significant part of our early history in this country. So the Braves are named so, not after Native Americans, but after those guys dressed up like Braves in the days before July 4, 1776.

By the way, the Cleveland Indians were named so after a former player on the Cleveland team who was a Native American. The player died while still playing and the team wanted to honor him by calling the team the 'Indians.' So we shouldn't be too critical of that use of the name, either.

There are plenty of incidents in our history in which the European-Americans took advantage of the Native-Americans for which we should be rightfully criticized without worrying about the use of these names by colleges, high schools and professional sports franchises.

That's my little sermon for the day.