U.S. evolves at differing rates

So what should we think of Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam and the fact that racist imagery – including that of the Ku Klux Klan – turns up in his college yearbook?

The Washington Post made this obscure yearbook page public knowledge. Personally, I'm more offended by Northam's quote than the photo

Personally, I’m not totally shocked.

I REMEMBER back when I was in college (mid-1980s) and looking through the old yearbooks from Illinois Wesleyan University – my alma mater – seeing graphics of Klan nightriders and hooded people being used as illustrations.

Entirely on those pages devoted to the fraternities that existed on campus.

But there is one fact that should be pointed out – these particular yearbooks were from the 1890s. Meaning they already were nearly a century old, and the ideals that may have existed on campus back then had long evolved into something far different from its origins.

I’ve also seen old University of Illinois yearbooks from the early 1900s indicating that the Ku Klux Klan once was regarded as a fully-legitimate fraternity on the Urbana, Ill., campus – although I’ve also seen various accounts indicating the U of I KKK was never an officially-recognized chapter of the Klan.

SO WHAT SHOCKS and appalls me about the Northam situation?

It’s that these Klan-like hooded images were still being considered acceptable as recently as the ‘80s – Northam was a student at Eastern Virginia Medical School, and it was the 1984 yearbook that included the photo of people in blackface and a Klan hood on a page devoted to Northam himself.

As for Northam saying in response that the questionable photograph is not of himself, but that he once remembers dressing up in blackface as part of a Michael Jackson impersonation, I’d think that is something that falls into the category of something stupid he once did that is now embarrassing.

NORTHAM: Same person now as he was in '84?

Largely because it makes many of us question his musical tastes in general. It’s something more silly than offensive. Or offensive in the sense that he could ever have been so ridiculous.

BUT THE REALITY is that this kind of imagery that had long withered away in Illinois was still considered acceptable in Virginia. Just as some people are still willing to fight for Confederate imagery in the form of flags and statues that still linger in parts of the nation.

Personally, I don’t have trouble believing that Northam himself had long forgotten about this imagery attached to his name, and he may well have moved far beyond this type of thought in his own life.

The smart-aleck in me thinks that if Northam still felt such thoughts in his daily existence, he’d be a Republican. Which probably would put him more in line with the bulk of the southern region from which he comes.

He’d probably be doing whatever he could to tie his imagery to that of President Donald Trump and going around wearing one of those red “Make America Great Again” caps – which some openly say is the 21^st Century’s version of wearing a white hood.

SO WHEN REPUBLICAN ideologues go about claiming that Northam is evidence of hypocrisy amongst those of the Democratic Party when it comes to racial issues, I see it more as evidence of trying to distract attention from their own racial hang-ups.

My point is that I’m not quickly jumping on board with those people who are demanding Northam’s resignation on grounds that he’s an embarrassment to his home state. Although I’m also wondering if the pressure is going to rise to such levels that he’ll have no choice BUT to resign!

Are the same people calling for Northam's resignation the same individuals who defend the continued existence of Confederate memorials?

I almost feel like the only people who’d win by denouncing Northam as an unreformed bigot are the unreformed bigots themselves – as though they’d try to claim this as justification for their own ignorant ways of thought.

While also expressing some thoughts indicating that they think we’d be better off going back to the past – such as an era where no one would give a second thought to anything being strange and hostile about the imagery stirred up by Northam’s college yearbook.

  -30-

War of the honored symbols; or are they really nothing more than mascots?

The baseball fan in me noticed the reports that the Cleveland Indians are removing (finally!) the Chief Wahoo logo that has been a part of the team culture for some 70-plus years. A good thing to see the absurd, cartoonish image no longer linger.

Which of these will have louder, ...

Or maybe it won’t be that simple.

BECAUSE I ALSO noticed the reports about the ongoing dispute over Chief Illiniwek; the alleged honored symbol of the University of Illinois who was formally abolished years ago – only to have certain ideologically-inclined fans of the Fighting Illini act as though they’re engaged in a noble cause by retaining the chief’s memory.

... more obnoxious proponents?

I won’t be surprised to see Indians fans and conservative ideologues go out of their way to snatch up the remaining supply of Wahoo-logo merchandise (the team will drop the symbol come the 2019 season) and wear it as a measure of spite.

Which in a sense would be a good thing – we’d now clearly be able to identify the idiots in our society. They’d be the people wearing Wahoo-emblazoned caps, t-shirts and jerseys.

Just as we can tell the people at the University of Illinois who are determined to live in the past when their silly image of a native chief was regarded as dignified – rather than as the cartoon it truly was. In one sense, no better than that of Wahoo.

Am I only one who sees similar grin?

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE reported Monday about a recent incident where a professor opposed to the chief imagery went into a restroom at what used to be called Assembly Hall, found an alumnus in chief regalia who apparently planned to make an unofficial appearance during a basketball game, and videotaped him.

The professor was arrested for supposedly violating laws against recording someone in a public restroom (a law intended to keep perverts from taking pictures of women during their private moments), but the state’s attorney for Champaign County refused to prosecute.

Of course, the chief backers are trying to portray the professor as some sort of pervert for using his camera in a restroom. Although it could also be argued that people determined to keep the chief image alive aren’t exactly the most rational of human beings.

Spokane Indians baseball figured out way to pay tribune

In short, the fact that the University of Illinois did away with Chief Illiniwek back in 2007 hasn’t brought this particular battle to a close. I expect that people on the Ohio scene will soon have similarly-absurd images to counter with.

PEOPLE DECIDING TO turn up at ballgames with their faces painted red and white to make themselves appear to be Chief Wahoo. An image that was officially commissioned by the ballclub back in 1947 by then-owner Bill Veeck (yes, the very same) who said he wanted something that, “would convey a spirit of pure joy and unbridled enthusiasm.”

Which strikes me as being as ridiculous as those Illinois alumni who argue on behalf of Illiniwek that he was an “honored symbol” who portrayed the people of the Illiniwek Confederation of old with dignity.

Is there really a difference?

He wasn’t a mascot, they’d argue, like Bucky Badger of the University of Wisconsin. You’d never catch the chief dancing with cheerleaders or giving a football quarterback a high-five following a successful touchdown pass.

They’d claim the dance he’d do at half-time of football and basketball games was actually authentic to the peoples who were native to what is now Illinois. I’ve known students who portrayed Illiniwek who claim that such clownish behavior would have got them in trouble.

NOT THAT ANY of that really matters. Throughout the years, it has adapted to being a caricature, one possibly just as ridiculous as that cartoonish Indian face with its ridiculous grin (so reminiscent of the “sambo” images that black people find so offensive) that some Indians fans will want to cling to.

Perhaps they will think this is part of their own ongoing fight to “Make America Great Again.” As though the idea of our society is based on images that kept certain peoples in their place and let them know they really didn’t fully belong.

Is calling this State Farm Center the real offense?

Not that I think there aren’t respectful ways of teams incorporating imagery of native tribes into their marketing. Although I suspect that many of the people who want screaming, screeching savages would consider those images dull and confusing.

Some people will fight for anything, no matter how ridiculous. Personally, if I were a Fighting Illini fan (my brother went to school there, I didn’t), I’d be more offended by the notion that the basketball team let their long-time home ditch the Assembly Hall moniker for State Farm Center. Now that’s something tacky.

  -30-

How likely are we to see a Madigan/Harold political brawl in '18?

How likely are we to see ...

There once was a time when political observers took seriously the possibility that Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan would make a credible attempt to run for governor.

But the presence of her father, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, creates so many potential headaches that Lisa has had to postpone her own political ambitions – to the point where 2018 likely will be her effort to seek re-election to a fifth term as the head attorney for state government.

 

... this political matchup on Nov. 6, 2018?

NOW, FROM THE land of academia (and crummy Big Ten football teams) known as Champaign-Urbana comes the potential for the most visible Republican challenger Lisa Madigan has ever had (does anyone really remember Steven Kim or Paul Schimpf?).

Reports starting with WCIA-TV in Champaign and spreading elsewhere indicate that local attorney Erika Harold is being contemplated for the GOP nomination for the post.

For those of you whose memories are faulty, Harold is a young woman who twice has tried running for Congress from her central Illinois district – only to lose both primaries.

Although the line that will get Harold national attention, and is the bit that Republican operatives are hoping gives her a chance to actually win against Madigan, is that back in 2003, she was Miss America.

AS IN A former Miss Illinois who bumped up to win the big prize of what officially is a scholarship pageant (and which enabled Harold herself to complete her Harvard Law School education) and spend the year wearing a tiara and making public appearances while looking glamorous at every opportunity.

For what it’s worth, she now practices law out of an office in Champaign (she probably realizes she’d be totally irrelevant if she tried moving to Chicago and becoming a part of the political scene here).

She has political ambitions. But she’s never been able to succeed. She can’t even win Republican primaries – although part of that may well be that the kind of people who vote in Republican primaries are just the type who would have a hang-up over another defining Harold characteristic.

Sexist to publish this old Harold image?

She is a light-skinned black woman. Which ought to be completely irrelevant. But in today’s Age of Trump, a political climate where people who have racial hang-ups are given a certain sense of credibility, it does.

THE TRICK WILL be to see if Harold can get a free ride through the Republican primary process in order to gain the party nomination and a chance to run against Madigan.

In which case, I’m sure Republican types will go overboard with talk about how Lisa’s time has passed (and probably never should have come about to begin with due to her father). We’ll probably also get an overdose of the glamour shots – perhaps to create the image of a more desirable woman in a political post?

And before anyone claims that’s a sexist image to create, I can’t help but notice that Harold herself uses a Facebook page to promote herself, and often digs up old photographs of herself from her Miss America days – such as the photos of herself she published just last week on Independence Day, signing autographs for soldiers at Fort Belvoir while wearing her tiara.

Recent images used on social media by Erika Harold ...

Of course, the fact that Harold has never won a thing politically means she has little else to run on other than this image that a segment of our society will find attractive – and another will find trivial.

IF ANYTHING, I find it sad that the Republican Party operatives have such a cynical view that they contemplate the need for Harold’s image – figuring that to beat a woman, they need to find one of their own. Nothing about a person’s actual qualifications for the post.

Which also is sad, because I don’t doubt that Harold has certain intellectual qualifications and probably could have been developed into a credible candidate for political office if she were treated seriously – rather than as eye candy for the electorate.

... and Lisa Madigan

Of course, as I already stated, the key will be whether Harold gets a free pass. Because if there’s some ambition type with a law degree who decides HE wants to run for Illinois attorney general, I don’t doubt that many Republican primary voters will prefer him to Harold. So we’ll have to see if a Madigan/Harold brawl ever occurs.

Although considering the anti-intellectual strain that runs through a segment of the GOP electorate these days, Harold may have to sacrifice her best credential of being a Harvard Law grad and emphasize her undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois – crummy football teams and all!

  -30-

How about a stalk of corn or a soybean as the new Fighting Illini mascot?

I’m writing this commentary on behalf of my late brother Christopher, who was a student down in Champaign, Ill., during the late 1980s and often had his own thoughts about the concept of Chief Illiniwek.

Could a new symbol be found in any of these historic university images?

For those not in the know, Illiniwek was the student (often a white kid) who dressed up as a native American in full Indian headdress who would do a half-time dance at the football and basketball games of the University of Illinois.

PROPONENTS OF THE Chief (and I actually once knew a guy who included being “the chief” as among his collegiate accomplishments) always claimed the costume he wore and the dance he did were authentic to the tribes of the Illiniwek Confederation – the people who were native to what is now Illinois before the French and English came.

They always claimed it to be a symbol of significance, and something much more dignified than Bucky Badger – the mascot of the arch-rival University of Wisconsin.

Of course, some people saw the notion of a white kid dancing about pretending to be an Indian chief as bordering on racism – almost as offensive as someone wearing blackface claiming to pay tribute to African-American people.

When the NCAA in 2005 threatened to penalize the university by taking away their ability to host post-season play (which would have been an economic loss), Illinois gave in and Illiniwek became history.

THERE ARE THOSE students with an ideological agenda who go out of their way to keep alive the image of Illiniwek (the kind of young, conservative-minded people that ideologue radio broadcaster Rush Limbaugh is depending upon to replenish his aging listeners). His very image has become a political statement.

For what it’s worth, my brother used to think Illiniwek was far from the “honored symbol” that his proponents claimed him to be. And yes, “honored symbol” is the phrase they insist MUST be used to refer to Illiniwek. My brother thought his fans were people in serious need of a date or two.

Although he also thought the people eager to oppose Illiniwek also had way too much free time on their hands. Either that, or they were using time that ought to e devoted to studying for their classes to fight a cause.

He’d wonder how they’d explain “C’s” and “D’s” on report cards that wound up in their tuition-paying parents’ hands. “I was fighting the Chief,” is perhaps what they’d say, while their parents groaned, looked skyward and questioned the point of that tuition check they had written out.

SO IT WILL be interesting to see what happens at the university, now that officials say they’re going to replace Illiniwek with the first official mascot ever of the University of Illinois.

No word on when they’ll have an image picked, or what it will be. Let’s only hope it doesn’t turn out to be something ridiculous like the tree that represents Stanford University.

Seriously, I could easily see the mascot being a giant corn stalk – for all the corn fields that comprise a significant segment of central Illinois farms. Either that, or soybeans. Who knows, maybe a giant soybean could be the Illinois mascot, with a giant container of soy milk as its companion?

This whole search for a mascot has the potential to be quite silly – particularly since Fighting Illini athletics have managed to make it through the past decade without Illiniwek or any official mascot to replace it.

IT’S NOT LIKE the presence of a costumed character will in any way enhance the quality of play on the field or court. It would take a program much more aggressive at recruiting athletes of quality from outside of rural Illinois in order to gain public attention – the reason many Chicagoans pay much more attention to their alma mater schools than the state university.

Lovie Smith as the Fighting Illini football coach is a more important move than a new mascot. Although if it turns out that Lovie brings winning ways to Champaign, then perhaps he will become the symbol of success the college is looking for.

Although I suspect many students feel there are more important things to worry about than this issue. And the ones who do find it a priority? I suspect they’re the ones having to explain the mediocre-to-low grades to their parents every semester.

Personally, I remember my own college days at Illinois Wesleyan University where we had Tommy Titan. He’s now an elaborately costumed character, although when I was a student, he was merely a chubby kid clad in a cheap gladiator-like costume. We IWU students didn’t feel any more or less enthusiasm as a result.

  -30-

EXTRA: Somebody wasn’t paying close enough attention to film

I’m not going to get all worked up over the nonsense being spewed down in Urbana-Champaign by those people purporting to be the White Student Union, who are ensuring that the views of white people are not overpowered by those of black people.

It’s too stupid to take seriously, for one thing. For another, I find one of their supporting arguments to be total nonsense.

THIS UNION ISN’T an actual group. It’s a Facebook page that was put up this week, then taken down, then restored and is now the subject of a fight over University of Illinois officials.

For it seems that one of the items that got posted on the page in support of their arguments that black people ought to just shut up and quit their whining was a video snippet from the 1998 film “American History X.”

In that film, actor Edward Norton’s “Derek Vinyard” character goes on a rant about how black people have no right to think of themselves as being hurt by slavery.

“Lincoln freed the slaves some 130 years ago. How long does it take you to get your act together,” his character said.

YET THAT IS such a weak argument because the film doesn’t support it. Actually, that film has Norton playing a character just released from prison following a two-year stretch for killing a black man.

During his time, he came to see the hypocrisy of his racial rhetoric and the people who espoused it, and upon prison was desperately trying to get himself and his brother – played by actor Edward Furlong – out of the white supremacy movement.

That particular scene was meant to be a flashback showing just how far gone and stupid the Derek Vinyard character was. It seems someone with this alleged group has no sense of context.

Either that, or they ought to be forced to write the paper about race relations that Furlong’s character was assigned to write at the film’s beginning. Perhaps they’d learn something and realize how nitwit-ish their White Student Union truly is!

  -30-

Who do we call the “home” team this time of college basketball season?

We’re at the point of the year where much public attention will be spewed upon the NCAA men’s basketball tourney for Division I, yet we here in the Land of Lincoln don’t have an obvious team to root for.

Now I’m sure there are many Chicagoans who went to college at various places across the country who can turn to their alma maters that were worth anything this past season to root for.

YET FOR THOSE of us looking for a local team, there isn’t much of anything. No Illinois school was able to get a bid to partake in the tourney.

Admittedly, Valparaiso University in Indiana is on the outermost southeast fringe of what could be called the Chicago area, although I’m sure people living north of 95^th Street would prefer think of it as alien turf. And some people like to think of Notre Dame as an area college, while just as many detest the very concept.

But the Hoosiers definitely got more on us this time of year – Indiana U. and Purdue also made it while the west side of State Line Road got nothing.

Those of us whose sporting attention isn’t totally dominated by spring training baseball and fantasies of that all-Chicago World Series taking place this year will have to look to the so-called lesser college basketball tournaments.

WITHIN THE CHICAGO area, there is Loyola University which got an invitation to the College Basketball Invitational. Where they will play their first (and potentially only) game Tuesday night against Rider College, and we likely will hear many repeats of how the Ramblers won the whole thing back in 1963!

There also will be Tuesday night basketball for the University of Illinois in Urbana, which got selected to participate in the National Invitational Tournament – which once was a big deal but now comes across as the ultimate consolation prize for failing to make it to the NCAA Division I tourney.

But they get to play the University of Alabama, which is noteworthy because they recently fired their basketball coach. Just BEFORE getting selected for the NIT.

I’m sure on a certain level, it would be a more intriguing story if Alabama were able to achieve some success under these circumstances. Could this mean the sporting nation would view a Fighting Illini victory as the ultimate bummer – completely ruining the story line?

I ALSO CAN’T see much enthusiasm for the other Illinois-based school that made it to the NIT – Illinois State University in Normal, which on Wednesday will have its first tournament game against the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

Will anyone (outside of alumni with fond memories of Garcia’s pizza) get worked up rooting for a team whose own NCAA tourney dreams came crashing down with a loss in the Missouri Valley Conference tournament to the University of Northern Iowa (which did get the NCAA bid)?

Perhaps if we pretend to ourselves that the team from Green Bay is the Packers, then we could get Chicagoans to care. Otherwise, I just don’t see it happening.

We may wind up finding a better tale if we drop down to the NCAA Division III level, where their national tourney began a couple of weeks ago. They already are down to their “final four” schools (out of 64) playing for a national title.

AND THERE, WE find an Illinois-based school with a serious shot at winning a championship – the Rock Island-based Augustana University, which will play Babson College Friday and possibly the winner of Virginia Wesleyan/University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point for the championship on Saturday.

Those of us with an Illinois rooting interest may have to look to the banks of the Mississippi River to find a local team to cheer for, although I’ll have to confess to feeling some confusion about this prospect.

The Illinois Wesleyan University alum in me knows of Augustana because the two schools both play in the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin (and the Vikings beat IWU in the conference tournament last month), while the Titans’ own national title dreams fell short last weekend with a loss to Stevens Point.

If those two schools make it to the title game Saturday in Salem, Va., it really would become a choice of which one’s victory would annoy me the least. It also could have me looking forward to the coming of a new baseball season all the more.

  -30-

Bring back the Maroons! It makes more sense than having SIU in Big Ten

Every year in the Illinois General Assembly manages to bring about a bill or two that gets a lot of attention just because the idea being espoused is so knuckleheaded and absurd that we know it’s going nowhere.

Not a ringing endorsement for Ill. flagship

This year, it seems the nonsense bill in question is one based upon the idea that Illinois needs to improve its educational opportunities for students by getting another of its public universities into the Big Ten.

AS IF WE don’t suffer enough by seeing Fighting Illini and Wildcats sports teams get their behinds kicked by Michigan, Ohio State and Indiana, state representatives Michael Connelly, R-Lisle, and Matt Murphy, R-Palatine, somehow think that having the Illinois State Redbirds or the Cougars of Southern Illinois-Edwardsville in the mix will bolster things.

This is just ridiculous on so many levels. But let’s take the key point that Connelly made in talking to the Chicago Sun-Times about this issue. “”Big Ten,’ to me, means a top state school. There’s a lot of pride in that. The Big Ten has a cachet and a record of higher academic and athletic excellence.”

Now I’m not looking to go on a diatribe against the University of Illinois. I have known many people (including my brother, Chris) who were educated there. It’s a fine place. But that statement from Connelly is just a bunch of hooey!

The reason some people choose to attend universities elsewhere is because they have achieved such standards and reputations that those top students want to challenge themselves (either that, or they have “legacy” connections that get them in).



MURPHY: Placing too much faith...

WE ALL KNOW it’s not 100 percent accurate to recall Tom Cruise’s “Joel” character from “Risky Business” and his reaction to learning he probably wasn’t going to be accepted to Princeton. But the Urbana-Champaign campus doesn’t really get bonus points academically because it’s in the Big Ten conference.

And the Big Ten sure doesn’t get much respect athletically when compared to the other major conferences that comprise the world of NCAA Division I sports.

Somehow, I suspect some alum of an SEC school is laughing his behind off at the thought of the Big Ten being elite. Then again, some of those alums may not be literate enough to read this commentary, so who knows how they will react. And as for the Ivy League types, their snootiness lets me easily disregard them.



CONNELLY: ... in Big Ten label?

I just think that some people are equating an athletic conference with way too much significance. And in the case of the Big Ten, it doesn’t help that their latest expansion efforts have been to get into the big media markets. That is, if you think of Rutgers as New York-area and Maryland as Washington, D.C.

THE ONLY WAY I could see the Big Ten wanting a third Illinois-based academic institution is if it would put them in Chicago proper (Northwestern University is, after all, based in suburban Evanston). I just can’t see them caring about Normal, Ill., or suburban St. Louis (as in Edwardsville). And don’t even bring up the main campus in Carbondale – a place so isolated physically it makes Champaign seem cosmopolitan.

Besides, what does any of this have to do with academics? Connelly and Murphy say their concern is that University of Illinois standards have become too high and many students get rejected.

How about working on ways to bolster the level of the other state-funded public universities? Which has nothing to do with the Big Ten label.

There’s also the fact that Connelly and Murphy think that students rejected by Illinois are going to other states, and not coming back. Yet how often do we hear about University of Michigan (or other Midwestern university) alumni who beehive it straight for Chicago once they graduate?

SO WHAT COULD this all mean? Probably nothing. The bill that already has made it through a state Senate committee calls for a commission to spend a year studying the issue – if it even gets approved. Nobody is bound to do anything.

Which means we’re not likely to ever see anything actually happen with this. Not even a return of the one Chicago university that actually has a Big Ten history.

The Stagg Field of old (and its Big Ten memories) are long gone from Hyde Park neighborhood campus. Illustration provided by Chuckman Chicago Nostalgia.

Restore the Chicago Maroons to the athletic conference for the first time since the late 1930s? I doubt it, largely because university officials themselves would see the Big Ten as a hindrance to their academic mission!

  -30-

How some people choose to expend energy; on warpath for pseudo-Chief

I’m not a University of Illinois alumnus, so I always have trouble identifying with the people who want to view it as a holy crusade, of sorts, to fight for the image of Chief Illiniwek.

The old stomping grounds of generations of pseudo-Chiefs

 

My alma mater’s mascot/honored symbol/whatever label you try to tag it with, was a student in a Titan costume – and a cheap one at that. It wasn’t something somebody would get upset over.

YET TO THIS day, there are people who want to view it as a travesty that the university did away with the image of a white student doing what was supposed to be a sacred native dance while wearing a tribal costume that was supposed to be distinctly authentic to the tribes native to what is now Illinois.

Of course, the matter that was bringing out all this imagery? The notion that the Fighting Illini sports teams might get their butts kicked a little less viciously than they usually do.

In all, not exactly something that the real natives would have ever used such sacred imagery for. Which is the point that the non-Indian tribal people always miss when they try to defend such things as Chief Wahoo in Cleveland or the Washington Redskins football team!

The distortion of native images is so laughable. It is more ridiculous than the distortion that occurred when the hippy-dippy types of the 1960s got themselves all into the images and cultures of India.

BUT IN A comical way that no real Indian person would ever do. Just like no real person whose ethnic origins trace back to the indigenous tribes of this nation (a fake Indian, because of the fact that Christopher Columbus was not so much a discoverer of nations, but was lost!) would ever think there was anything real about Illiniwek.

Which is what makes their fight seem so trivial.

Ever since Illiniwek (I actually once met a former Illiniwek back in the days when I worked at the state Capitol in Springfield – he’s now a corporate executive for railroad interests) disappeared in 2007, there has been a group calling itself the Honor the Chief Society.

Chief as long-gone as this melted ice sculpture

They are a batch of disgruntled student types who want to think the hippy-dippy types have taken over the world from decent, respectable types like themselves! Which means they think the rest of the world should shut up and do what they tell them to do.

THEY WENT SO far as to try to register the Chief Illiniwek logo for themselves, claiming the university had abandoned it.

Which has resulted in lawsuits, legal action and attorneys getting richer and richer – because the university didn’t want anyone doing something with the logo that would have reflected negatively on the Urbana-based college.

The two sides came to an agreement this week that really maintains the status quo. They can’t create an Indian mascot and call it the New Chief Illiniwek. They can’t make any merchandise of their own with the Illiniwek logo.

They can make their own merchandise with the phrase “Honor the Chief.” Although their website and promotional materials will be required to contain the phrase, “The Honor the Chief Society is not sponsored, licensed, approved or endorsed by the University of Illinois.”

IN SHORT, THE great Illiniwek legal battle resulted in the group being treated like a pack of cigarettes – they have to have a warning label of sorts to let you know that something bad exists here.

And in return for accepting a warning label, the group will get to sell t-shirts and perhaps a coffee mug or two. Is this really a fight about merchandising?

All of which I suspect will only be purchased by people more interested in making conservative ideological statements. While the student body will shrug off the issue as a whole lot of nonsense about nothing.

Because the rest of us who attended a college and that type of experience remember the parties, the pressure of classes, the intellectual rewards and even some of the ballgames – not the student who wore a funny costume because he wasn’t good enough to actually play on one of the athletic teams.

  -30-

EXTRA: Chicago-area’s true best team?

Suburban Naperville-based North Central College lost out Saturday on its chance to win a national title in men’s basketball, losing 52-44 to Amherst University – which now plays for the national title April 7 in Atlanta against Mary-Hardin Baylor College from Texas alongside the Division I tourney that will get all the public attention.

Although it should be noted that the Cardinals’ defense on Saturday managed to hold the Amherst defense to about 50 points – just one day after the Lord Jeffs managed to score 101 points in their victory over Cabrini College in Pennsylvania.

IT ALSO DOESN’T take away from the fact that North Central made it to the “Final Four” of the NCAA Division III tournament – which likely will make them the best-achieving college basketball program from Illinois for 2012-13.

I really doubt the Fighting Illini will make it much farther than their game Sunday against the University of Miami Hurricanes.

When was the last time any Chicago-area college did so well in a basketball tourney? There’s always that DePaul squad from 1979 that made it to the Final Four.

Or those North Park University basketball teams that between 1978 and 1987 won five national titles – including three in a row between 1978, 1979 and 1980. Which as far as I’m concerned is all the more reason to pay attention to the Division III athletic scene when considering college-level sports.

FOR THOSE OF you who are thinking I’m getting too worked up over small-college sports, think of it this way.

Would you really rather I get worked up over the thought of whether or not we should take Todd Stroger’s desires to serve as a commissioner on the Cook County Board that seriously?

  -30-

From one gridiron extreme to the other

It amuses me the degree to which some people get all worked up into a frazzle whenever the subject of Notre Dame football is discussed.

How long has it been since "Touchdown Jesus" didn't feel like weeping instead?

While I’ll be the first to admit that some Notre Dame fans can be insufferable (I find the film “Rudy” to be unwatchable), the level to which some people go to express their outright hatred of the Fighting Irish is just downright stupid.

IT IS WITH that latter group in mind that I must confess to being pleased to learn that Notre Dame managed to defeat the University of Southern California Saturday night – and that it would take some serious mathematical juggling worthy of a corrupt Election Day vote counter to deny Notre Dame a spot in the Bowl Championship Series top game.

As for those people who’d really rather think that a legitimate championship should consist of two Southern schools (specifically from the Southeast Conference), to them I can only get in the holiday season and say, “Bah Humbug!”

I don’t know if I really consider the Chicago metro area to stretch as far east as South Bend, Ind. (the way some area sports fans do). But it will be intriguing to have something resembling a local angle come the early January date when Notre Dame takes on the best of Dixieland in an attempt to say which was the best college football team for 2012.

If it winds up being seen as a loogie spit in the face of certain pundits, I’ll root for a Fighting Irish victory on that date.

AND BY PUNDITS, I’m thinking of one New York-based clown I saw talking last week on television about what he regarded as stupid expansion by the Big Ten.

The conference that once was all about our Midwest and the Great Lakes states is now in the New York media market in the form of Rutgers University (it’s “New York” in the same sense that Notre Dame is  “Chicago”).

This pundit (whom I’m going to allow to be nameless largely because I didn’t bother to catch his name, and he was so uninteresting that I figure he’s not worth too much of my time) claimed that New Yorkers are “so sophisticated” that they will only pay attention to the “best game,” and there’s no way the Big Ten will ever produce such a game.

You can argue all you want about the quality of play of Big Ten football these days. All I can say is that perhaps he paid too much attention to the University of Illinois – which on Saturday finished of this dismal season without winning a single in-conference game and having an overall record that makes the Chicago Cubs look successful.

THAT WAS QUITE a walloping the Fighting Illini got from “Chicago’s Big Ten Team.” Although I think the fact that Illini fans would have considered a victory over Northwestern University to be a season salvation is kind of sad.

Is there really any difference between 1-7 and 0-8?

Besides, I can’t quite help but think the slogan is a bunch of bunk. My own observation is that many Northwestern students come to Evanston from out-of-town (out-of-state or out-of-country, more likely) and leave here once they graduate.

Attending a suburban-based university is their “Chicago” experience in life – similar to how I did a semester at American University in Washington and say I once lived, however briefly, in the nation’s capital.

I SENSE MORE Chicago spirit for Illinois, where I have known many area residents who made their “downstate” sojourn for a few years before returning home to have their adult lives.

But even then, the most intense fans of Fighting Illini football are the ones who live in those downstate Illinois communities where it is easier to drive to Champaign to see a game rather than make the trips north or south to see the Bears or Rams, respectively.

Admit it. You looked too!



Which is why I sense that for the bulk of Chicago sports fans, there was probably more interest in Notre Dame’s Saturday victory than in anything that happened at building once known as Dyche Stadium.

And as for me? My attention was more focused on the sidelines for whatever glimpses I could gain from the famed USC Song Girls.

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A Daley at Chicago (as in the U. of)?

DALEY: He's now a Maroon

When Milton Rakove wrote his reknowned book about Chicago politics entitled, “We Don’t Want Nobody Nobody Sent,” the title was a direct takeoff on the attitude that political Chicago had toward the University of Chicago.

It referred to the way his attempt to volunteer his time to work on behalf of local government was rebuffed because he was from the Hyde Park neighborhood, the University of Chicago AND had no political sponsor.

MEANING, HE OWED nothing to nobody, and therefore wouldn’t be inclined to follow orders because he’d have nothing to lose.

In many senses, the Hyde Park-based university has always been an island on the South Side, and from the city. The Maroons may tout our city’s name. But many a Chicagoan considers it an alien land.

So it is in that context that the appointment of Richard M. Daley to a part-time position on the faculty at the University of Chicago may well be the ultimate sign that the “old” ways of doing things politically are dead.

The last thing that any old-school Chicago machine politico would ever want to do is have a tie to the University of Chicago. A part of me envisions cemeteries all across the city feeling the rumblings of politicos of the past turning over in their graves at the thought of a mayor, let alone one named “Daley,” taking on a role.

OF COURSE, THERE always was a sense that the university itself wanted little to do with the city proper, other than use it for a home address.

This was a place that, throughout the years, has rebuffed my own reporter-type requests for information on various issues related to the city, usually on some variation of the grounds that the issues I was bringing up were “too parochial” for the university’s academics.

You want to know about Chicago? Call DePaul or Loyola, or maybe Northwestern.

My point being that I’m not sure which thought is more unusual. Daley going to the University of Chicago? Or the university wanting him around to begin with?

MAYBE THE SIGNIFICANCE of this appointment is that it means the University of Chicago plans to take a greater interest in its home city – and not just in making sure that urban grime from the rest of the South Side doesn’t spill over into Hyde Park (which at times really feels like a nice place to visit, but a land alien from the rest of Chicago).

Not that Daley is going to be a real professor – as in teaching courses and putting together a syllabus and lecturing on a regular basis and being someone who maintains office hours and is accessible to students.

Anybody who thinks the university is about to offer a course entitled “Political Science 380: Machine politics” needs to get a grip on themselves. Either that, or come up with a more original punch line for their joke.

Officially, he’s getting the title of “distinguished senior fellow.” He’s going to be a part of the university’s Harris School of Public Policy Studies. For the next five years, he will be expected to organize up to 10 guest lectures to be held on campus, or at locations where the university can take credit for sponsoring the events.

IN SHORT, DALEY being on the faculty of the University of Chicago is the university’s attempt to feed off his political connections – hoping that he can help them put on more interesting programs that relate to politics and urban affairs. Considering that Daley’s connections extended to several White Houses, that’s a lot of clout they’re hoping to get.

EDGAR: Reviving a rivalry?



But it also means in many ways that Daley’s post-mayoral outcome will be similar to that of his one-time political rival – Jim Edgar. The former Illinois governor became a “distinguished fellow” at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign upon leaving office early in 1999.

Perhaps the two men can revive their competitive streak, as we see which university puts on the more prestigious programs about public policy issues. In short, which man has the better connections?

Unlike Edgar, Daley isn’t relying solely on this. He’s rumored to be seeking spots on the speaking circuit – offering up his opinions to any group that will pay him for his time. He may even give us a book. There’s even the speculation that President Barack Obama (now a fellow politico with U. of C. ties) will give him some sort of appointment to a federal post.

A NICE TITLE. But it likely will be the Hyde Park campus that will provide Daley with a place to set up an office.

With the Chicago Police Department continuing to provide him something resembling a security detail, Hizzoner, Jr., isn’t about to lose the trappings of being a prominent person anytime soon.



All he has to do is arrange for a car service, and he may be able to delude himself into thinking he’s still a public official – only one without the pressure of having to make decisions about government issues.

Let Rahm-bo have those headaches!

  -30-