Will Northwestern gridders feel fortunate they’re being allowed to play football? Or will they look out for self?

Members of the Northwestern Wildcats football program got their chance to vote on whether they can organize themselves as a union, but we’re not going to know the results for quite a while – if ever.

Ryan Stadium? Or a union shop?

I suspect if the university gets its way, we’ll never get a vote tally from the National Labor Relations Board. Just as they enforced the concept that the Evanston-based campus is private property, and they restricted who could be at the Welsh-Ryan Arena – where the voting took place.

SUPPOSEDLY, IT’S THE players who wanted this sense of privacy on Friday. Although I suspect most of them don’t really care either way, and it’s the university that doesn’t want the site of players talking to reporters about how much they’d like the additional protections that come about from unionization and collective bargaining.

The closest I ever came to being in this situation was a few months after I graduated from college, and I was writing for a suburban newspaper that was going through the process of trying to establish ourselves as a chapter of the Newspaper Guild.

We got as far as an election, and yes, I voted “yes” for union. But a slight majority of my colleagues voted “no,” and the union effort failed.

I’m sure the football players in recent weeks have been getting bombarded with information from both sides, trying to influence the young men of now how they want the football program to be in decades to come.

WHAT I RECALL of my own “union” experience is that I had to go through a summer and autumn of information bombardment before our election came about! Being told by one side how valued my talents were, and by the other how incredibly replaceable I was.

It was an intense-enough experience that I have no interest in going through that process anywhere else. Which I’m sure the Northwestern players will feel following Friday’s vote.

In listening to the rhetoric that has been spewed in recent weeks about the Northwestern situation, I can’t help but notice its similarity to my own memories. Some people want to emphasize how talented these particular athletes are, while others – particularly those who like to devote their lives to athletics – want to believe that people ought to be thankful to live in that world.

And if there happens to be circumstances involving injury that prevents them from playing any longer, perhaps it’s their own fault for getting injured. Some people (and not just in athletics) seem to be inclined to look the other way and ignore the problems that exist.

PERSONALLY, I’M INCLINED to think that the concerns of players about what becomes of them if they suffer a disabling injury is a legitimate one. Universities make enough money off their athletic programs that they ought to have some concern for the physical state of their players.

For as much as the big-time college athletic programs demand of their players with regards to time commitment for practice and promotion, it is difficult – if not impossible – for many of them to be serious students. Even if they were inclined to be!

Universities ought to be taking their students’ personal welfare more seriously. If anything, THAT is what I would hope would be the outcome of this labor situation.

Let the colleges improve conditions for their players to the point where those student-athletes would literally feel like they’re students just like everybody else on campus. And that the idea of needing a labor union to represent their interests would seem to them to be a tad bit of overkill.

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St. Xavier football gives local politicos only chance to brandish a trophy

Cook County officials were in their glory on Wednesday as they got to engage in a bit of fluff before delving into such serious issues as immigration “detainers” and how messed up are Stroger Hospital finances?

It was football time.

What fun is football without cheerleaders?



AND SINCE THE Chicago Bears had their season in 2011 delve into a level of complete dreck, it turned to the St. Xavier Cougars from the Southwest Side to provide the occasion.

St. Xavier last month beat Carroll College (in the Milwaukee suburbs) for the NAIA national championship title for last year. Which makes them the first college football team from Chicago proper to be able to make such a claim in 99 years.

It seems the University of Chicago (back in the days when they were Big Ten) can make a claim of sharing a title with Harvard University for 1913. That was the last, until the athletes from St. Xavier gave us something to cheer for – had we been paying attention this autumn.

Which is why team and university officials were at the Cook County Board meeting, bringing their huge trophy to show off, while Commissioner John Daley boasted that his father (the late Mayor Richard J.) helped to develop the neighborhood around 103^rd Street just west of Central Park Avenue.

AND COMMISSIONER JERRY “the Iceman” Butler mocked the student-athletes by asking them, “I’m wondering why it took you 99 years” to win.

Of course, it doesn’t say much that St. Xavier is the first Chicago college football team to win a championship in so long. It’s not like the Chicago White Sox going 88 years between World Series victories or the Chicago Cubs still waiting for a World Series victory after 104 seasons of coming up short (some years, way short).



Chicago's latest athletic champion. Photographs provided by St. Xavier University



For to the best of my knowledge, there are few Chicago-based colleges that have football programs – St. Xavier, the aforementioned University of Chicago and North Park University up around Foster and Kedzie avenues.

And North Park’s moment of athletic glory came back in the late 1970s-early 1980s when their basketball program won four consecutive national titles.

IN SHORT, MOST of our urban universities have scaled back athletic programs (compared to the major conference state universities) that tend to focus on basketball as their main endeavor. In short, Chicago hasn’t had a championship college football team in 99 years because there simply aren’t many teams.

For those of you who want to cite the Northwestern Wildcats football program, keep in mind that they technically are an Evanston-based entity. They belong to the suburbs and don’t really count in this particular achievement.

I wonder how much locals really care about college athletics – unless they went to a particular school. I know in my own case, most of my attention goes to my alma mater – which I recall had basketball teams in the mid-1980s that used to play extremely well, UNTIL North Park would come to town and whomp on our butts.

It is the reason why that Northwest Side college is one part of Chicago that I just can’t get into. The old IWU Titan fan in me holds me back. Even if North Park ever put together a football program that would manage to do the city proud by accomplishing what St. Xavier managed to do.

IT WILL BE interesting to see if St. Xavier is able to follow up in future seasons on their achievements of 2011. At the very least, it must be a highlight for the athletes on that team who by-and-large are Chicago-area kids from places like Mount Carmel High School, Thornton High in Harvey or Joliet Central.

They got to say they played college football, and have some memories of a championship – even though most of us weren’t watching closely as they ratcheted up their record of 14-1 (their only loss was a 27-9 game on Nov. 5 against Indiana-based Marian University).

Let’s just hope we don’t have to wait another 99 years before some local institution of higher learning gives our city another championship of a sort.

Because if we have to wait for the Cubs to do something right – I don’t think any of us can live that long!

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Kustra takes on cause of smaller schools in the weird world of college football

If one thinks back a decade-and-a-half ago, the name “Bob Kustra” was prominent because of his proximity to the Illinois governor (whose health wasn’t always the best) and how close he came to becoming U.S. senator from Illinois.



KUSTRA: When he was one of us ...

Which is why I find humor in the fact that when Kustra has now reached his moment of national prominence, it is for something as trivial as college football.

KUSTRA, AFTER FIGURING out following the 1996 election cycle that his days as an Illinois politico (a one-time legislator from Park Ridge, along with lieutenant governor under Jim Edgar) were over, got himself into the world of academia.

He left Illinois to head a college in Kentucky, and has since moved on to Idaho – where these days he carries the title of president of Boise State University.

Which is why Kustra took it personally when Ohio State University President Gordon Gee said recently that Division I universities with smaller-scale football programs don’t deserve to be considered for the Bowl Championship Series – that convoluted setup by which college football tries to pick a national champion each season.

Gee actually singled out both Boise State and Texas Christian University – both of which have gone undefeated this season, but Gee claims are unworthy because they allegedly play schedules filled with weaker teams.

I SAY “ALLEGEDLY” because even the schools of the major athletic conferences, such as the Big Ten, always manage to put a few of the same smaller schools on their schedule. Or does somebody out there really believe that Eastern Michigan and Ohio universities on the Ohio State schedule are really that much better than Wyoming or San Jose State on the Boise State schedule?



... and now, in academia

So when Gee said that Boise State is playing teams from places like, “the Little Sisters of the Poor,” we got to hear Kustra respond in kind that perhaps Ohio State is playing, “the Little Brothers of the Poor.” Being willing to take on the big powers of college football and academia isn't the fate we in Illinois would have expected for Kustra.

This outburst comes from the man whom, when the Illinois GOP was at its peak in the mid-1990s, the party regulars wanted to send off to Washington to take over the seat the Paul Simon abandoned when he retired in 1996.

Of course, that seat wound up being filled by Richard Durbin, who defeated the guy who beat Bob Kustra in the GOP primary – the now-barely remembered Al Salvi. Kustra in that campaign came off as too meek and timid to appease the more conservative elements of the Illinois GOP.

WHICH IS WHAT started the trail of academia that put Kustra in the position to be capable of defending the smaller-scale colleges whose athletic programs still pretend to exist to bolster the reputation of their respective universities, rather than to exist on their own merits.

I’ll be the first to admit that my bias when it comes to college athletics is to find more interest in the smaller schools, largely because I went to a university whose athletic programs were Division III. The whole idea of dredging up young bodies to use them for a season or two on behalf of the sports teams just seems too alien to me.

I knew people in college who took their sports very seriously, but were also in school because they wanted to be there.

Now I’m not necessarily claiming that Boise State has some high-minded, idealistic football program. But I can see where their fans would come off thinking that it is ridiculous to look down on them.

AND THE FACT that this year, the Boise State Broncos have managed to go through their season thus far undefeated ought to make them worthy of some consideration for the top bowl games. It is, after all, supposed to be about Division I sports. It’s not like Boise State is a community college program (which can offer some quality play, but exist in their own athletic universe).

Anybody who tries to argue that Boise State would somehow cheapen, or taint in some way, the bowl game is being ridiculous. I can’t help but remember how much interest was created last season in college basketball when Butler University of Indianapolis managed to make it all the way to the championship game of the NCAA tournament. Are some people too blind to realize that Boise State could become the equivalent story for college football?

So when Boise State travels to Reno, Nev., on Friday to play Nevada, then takes on Utah State come Dec. 4, I’ll have to be the first to admit I probably will be rooting for them to win.

An undefeated Boise State would complicate the mix by which the NCAA tries to figure out which college football programs deserve to be in the top bowl game. If by chance the powers-that-be of college football try to keep out the smaller schools, we now know that Kustra will be more than capable of raising a stink that will be entertaining to listen to.

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A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): Obama wants Hawaii to end goofy theory

We like to think of Barack Obama as “one of us” when it comes to the strong Chicago ties he and his White House staff have these days. Yet Obama is trying to put to rest the conspiracy theories peddled by his most stringent critics by reminding us all of how he’s a native Hawaiian.

Officials in the 50th State made public documentation that purports to claim beyond a doubt that Obama was born in Hawaii. Checking out the Chicago Tribune website will (http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2009/07/obama_hawaiianborn_hawaii_insi.html) give one a glimpse of the document that purports to be a birth certificate for Obama.

WITH THAT DOCUMENTATION comes a statement from Hawaii officials claiming that this shows once and for all that Obama was born in Hawaii, which makes him a U.S. citizen (Hawaii had been a full-fledged state for nearly two years by the time of Obama’s birth in 1961).

Of course, those of us with common sense realize two things about this so-called controversy (which is peddled by the types of people who think G. Gordon Liddy is a rational human being).

1 – This “issue” will never go away. No documentation will ever convince those people that Obama is a U.S. citizen. In fact, even if you could convince them, the argument would then change to how the laws are flawed so that someone like Obama could be a U.S. citizen.

2 – It was a mistake to even try. Because now, we’re going to be burdened with rants from the right about how this documentation is irrelevant, if not forged.

FOR THE RECORD, the document released by Hawaii officials contends that our president is the son of Stanley Ann Dunham and Barack H. Obama, who is identified racially as an “African.”

What this shows us is that the records in the computers of Hawaii state government confirm what we have been told all along. But by feeling the need to dignify this issue, one only ensures that it will live on – regardless of the lack of “evidence” to support an argument against it.

Of course, if it weren’t for this issue, there would be those who would find another “critical” problem to obsess over – what kind of beer will Obama serve at the White House when he meets later this week with Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the Cambridge, Mass., cop who arrested him outside the professor’s own home.

What other issues were of interest on the shores of Lake Michigan between Gary, Ind. and Waukegan?

WILL STROGER WIN BY DEFAULT?: Leave it to the Daily Herald newspaper of Arlington Heights to come to the conclusion that should have been obvious – Todd Stroger may be the big winner by Mayor Richard M. Daley’s choice to serve on the City Council.

Daley picked Robert Maldonado to replace Billy Ocasio, who gave up an aldermanic post to be a top adviser to Gov. Pat Quinn. Maldonado now gives up his Cook County commissioner post to become an alderman.

Stroger benefits in the ongoing political fight to force him to back away from the sales tax increase he pushed for last year to help fund county government. He vetoed that measure next week, and the County Board will consider whether to override him when they meet again in early September (the board takes August off).

The problem (for those who want a repeal of the tax increase)? There were barely enough votes (http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=309759&src=1) to override. Without Maldonado, an override of the veto will fail, which means Stroger will prevail. That is, unless William Beavers, Jerry Butler or Joseph Moreno were to change their mind. Fat chance.

FURLOUGHS AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO LAYOFFS: It seems to be the favorite cost-cutting tactic for government officials. Force workers to take some days off without pay.

If they complain, let them know they ought to be thankful (http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2009/07/daley-outlines-unpaid-days-off-for-top-schools-park-district-and-cta-officials.html#more) to have jobs at all.

Daley on Tuesday said he wants employees of six agencies – the Chicago Transit Authority, the park district and housing authority, the Chicago Public Schools and City Colleges of Chicago, and the Public Building Commission – to take the unpaid days off similar to how non-union city employees were asked a few weeks ago to take up to 15 days per year without salary.

Getting those 2,000 employees at the six agencies to take the days off is expected to save the city about $18 million, which officials say is necessary if this year’s municipal budget is to remain balanced.

WILL FOOTBALL RETURN TO THE HUMBLE ABODE OF ONE ELWOOD J. BLUES: Excuse me for not getting the fascination with teams being able to play games in the 95-year-old building at 1060 W. Addison St.

It appears there has been talk of having Big 10 football played at Wrigley Field – specifically, the all-Illinois game (http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/college/chi-28-big-ten-wrigley-field-jul28,0,2115854.story) between the University of Illinois and Northwestern University. This comes after the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team managed to stage a game there back in January. Could football return to Wrigley Field after a nearly four-decade hiatus?

It doesn’t shock me that some would rather stage the game in Chicago, and I also understand that the Chicago Park District isn’t exactly the most understanding landlord when it comes to teams other than the Chicago Bears using Soldier Field.

But back in the days when the Chicago Bears played their games at Wrigley Field, the place was known for having a field that was too small to accommodate a regulation football field. With changes made in recent years to bring even more seats closer to field level, there definitely isn’t room now. Or does the sight of a Wildcat football player stumbling into the dugout (or a Fighting Illini crashing into the outfield wall) really amuse that many people?

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Some people won't let go of Illiniwek

When it comes to mascots, I have gone to schools that had me rooting for a trotting horse, a Rebel (as in anti-Yankee), a generic American Indian chief (since abandoned) and a Fighting Titan.

None of these symbols (they’re really mascots, regardless of people who see “honor” in cartoonish images) drew the fan faithful the way some people continue to get all worked up at the image of Chief Illiniwek.

THE UNIVERSITY OF Illinois’ mascot died two years ago after the university’s athletic department learned the NCAA would penalize them as long as they kept the image of a white kid dressed as a faux Indian chief doing a parody of real dances of cultural significance to American Indian tribes.

But there are some people who are determined to never let the chief die.

That’s why activists who see the death of the chief as a cause celebre went ahead and picked a new student to portray the chief, and they plan to have that student show off his routine come this weekend.

Illiniwek, the sequel, will perform his dance during a celebration at Assembly Hall – the university’s basketball arena – even though the big athletic event on Saturday is the Fighting Illini/Ohio State football game to be played across the street in Champaign’s Memorial Stadium.

THAT ALLOWS THE university to say that the new chief is an unofficial event. And it would be improper for the university (which since it receives some state funding is technically an agent of Illinois government) to tell people who happen to be in Champaign what they can (or cannot) do with their spare time.

If they want to go watch a white kid prance around while wearing a buckskin costume, that’s their business. Personally, I (and I would hope most of the people who are in Champaign this weekend for the game) can think of better ways to spend my time.

Now I am not a University of Illinois alumnus (although my brother, Chris, is). So I have trouble taking it at face value that people seriously find the tired stereotypical imagery of an “Injun Chief” (and that’s what Illiniwek truly is) something getting all worked up over.

But I can picture that some social conservatives who are upset to learn that a lot of the imagery they grew up with was warped and twisted enough that it needs to go will see this whole issue as one of “political correctness” run amok, even though “politically correct” is really more about good manners than anything else.

DOES THAT MAKE the chief’s backers merely rude?

This backlash mentality is why I was always hesitant to get too outraged with and excited for the American Indian activists who devoted much time and effort throughout the years to getting the Chief Illiniwek imagery abandoned by the university.

I honestly believe that the current student body would not have cared much what happened to the “mascot” of the athletic department, because the University of Illinois students I have known throughout the years are no different than those who attend other colleges across Illinois without getting all attached to a goofy stereotypical image.

With that fact, Illiniwek would have faded away some two decades ago – if it had been left up to the student body.

ILLINIWEK’S SUPPORTERS WERE always a movement of older alums who were determined to keep the college just the way they remembered it (and when one considers that the Ku Klux Klan once had an official chapter at the university – check out their photographs in the 1910s era yearbooks – that past was not always pleasant).

These alums got so angered up that even after losing the fight (the chief will never be an official part of the university again – his dance routine at halftime on the football field proper remains history), they feel the need to keep fighting.

That is sad because this fight is a truly trivial issue. It detracts from the university and its athletic programs. Personally, I find it ridiculous to think there are people who are going to make a special trip back to their alma mater for the “big game,” just so they can see a fake chief do a dance. I don’t care how bad the Illini football program can be at times. They deserve better.

The idea that some people will pay $5 in order to get into the Assembly Hall just to see the dance strikes me as the ultimate in ludicrous acts. And the fact that they think they’re making a “political statement” is nothing more than pathetic.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Check out the Chief? I’d like to think that sensible students and others will celebrate (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-talk-illiniweknov12,0,5703258.story) the Illinois/Ohio State outcome in the bars along Green Street.

So much for the concept that the student body at-large is all concerned about having (http://media.www.dailyillini.com/media/storage/paper736/news/2008/11/12/Editorials/Campus.Should.Let.The.Chief.Rest.In.Peace-3537990.shtml) Illiniwek back.

For those who want to relive the years of political infighting that finally culminated in the 2007 decision (http://www.will.uiuc.edu/am/projects/chiefilliniwek/features.htm) to do away with Illiniwek. And for those who think I’m kidding when I write that the Klan once had (http://www.library.uiuc.edu/archives/slc/researchguides/UIKuKluxKlan.pdf) a chapter openly exist at the Urbana-based university.