What's In A Nickname? Do team nicknames honor or dishonor Native Americans?

espn.go.com ^ | Rick Reilly

[GSWarrior]

I guess this is where I'm supposed to fall in line and do what every other American sports writer is doing. I'm supposed to swear I won't ever write the words "Washington Redskins" anymore because it's racist and offensive and a slap in the face to all Native Americans who ever lived. Maybe it is.

I just don't quite know how to tell my father-in-law, a Blackfeet Indian. He owns a steak restaurant on the reservation near Browning, Mont. He has a hard time seeing the slap-in-the-face part.

"The whole issue is so silly to me," says Bob Burns, my wife's father and a bundle holder in the Blackfeet tribe. "The name just doesn't bother me much. It's an issue that shouldn't be an issue, not with all the problems we've got in this country."

And I definitely don't know how I'll tell the athletes at Wellpinit (Wash.) High School -- where the student body is 91.2 percent Native American -- that the "Redskins" name they wear proudly across their chests is insulting them. Because they have no idea.

[Venturer]

I have a message for dipsticks who go after a team for their name.

F ‘em

Don’t they have anything better to do?

They can KMA.

[GSWarrior]

Funny how I arrive at the exact opposite conclusion in regards to this particular column.

[Dr.Deth]

Let’s protest the name “Miami Heat” as an insult to entropy.

[LibertarianLiz]

Who names a team after something the don’t like and don’t respect and whose noble qualities they don’t want to emulate?

Exactly. One of the funniest things I ever heard was Dennis Prager, receiving a call from someone who demanded to know how HE would feel if they were naming a team after the Jews. He laughed and started explaining to her that this would be the first time in human history where people would be cheering for the Jews: "I'm going to watch a Jew game" "Go, Jews!". It was hysterical.

[LibertarianLiz]

Is San Diego Padres insulting to the Catholic Church?

No, no --- insulting the Catholic Church is not only tolerated, it is expected. It is noble to insult the Catholic Church.

[GSWarrior]

Funny.....

[morphing libertarian]

LOL. I would say the Pads record is an insult to the church, the spanish, and all residents of San Diego.

[RedMonqey]

...really disgusted when Eastern Michigan changed their name from the Hurons to the Falcons.

What's ironic is liberals, in their "quest" to do "good", are "whitewashing" American Indians brave heritage out of the public domain, hence are acting like their ideological cousins in the Soviet Union where persons who fell out of political favor, were erased both physically and from photos, text books, etc...

[GSWarrior]

I am curious as to why you have the impression that Reilly hates Tebow. Everything I have read by him about TT is positively glowing.

[Vendome]

I say we treat the Indians like the gods of Rome.

They stopped talking about the gods in their daily lives, until one day they were never spoken about again and simply became irrelevant. Relics of the past and mere myths.