When I was in law school at the University of Texas in the late seventies, the school had an intramural flag football league.  The dominant team, year after year, was coached by one of the most senior and powerful professors at the school.  They had sponsors.  They had access.  They had discipline.  They had continuity and tradition.  They actively recruited the best athletes in the school.  They practiced in secret so no one could see their plays.  They were called the Legal Eagles.  They won every year.

    A group of us decided to take them on and put together a team of second and third rate players--the best we could find from among those passed over by the Legal Eagles.  We had a couple of great players and a lot of good ones.  The Legal Eagles had a lot of great players.  We knew we couldn’t win.  We didn’t have the speed, we didn’t have the size and we didn’t have the playbook.  But we were good enough to get to the finals and we made a good game of it, even leading at one point.

    When we were organizing the team and attempting to make a realistic assessment of our prospects, it came time to pick a name for the enterprise.  Since I was young and still somewhat witty, I suggested the “Saline Abortions,” Roe v. Wade still being a relatively recent event, as an accurate reflection of our chances.  There may have been beer involved.  I was outvoted and we chose some other name that I do not remember now, likely something deeply meaningful like the “Appellate Briefs” or “Defensive Motion,” or some such.  But the point is, the Fighting Ducks aside, people do not choose self-denigrating names for their sports teams.  Even in jest.  Even in an enterprise as hopelessly meaningless as an intramural football league at a law school.

     Only a form of deep delusion, bordering on psychosis, could induce an outfit like the NCAA to conclude that schools choose demeaning names for their sports teams and mascots.  The slightest contact with reality would inform even a casual observer that sports teams choose nicknames and mascots that they believe reflect positive attributes they either have or aspire to.  Names evoking power, aggression, endurance, perseverance, pride, intelligence and teamwork are common.  Among teams choosing animal mascots you see such names as Eagles, Bears, Cougars, Lions, Wildcats, Owls, Dolphins, Wolverines, and Marlins, but not Vultures, Buzzards, Snakes, Leeches, Opossums, Sparrows, and Bunnies.  Not that there is anything wrong with sparrows and bunnies, but they do not evoke the desired image.

    Consequently, when teams choose human groups for their namesakes, they look for the same virtuous attributes: strength, cunning, courage, etc.  So we see Spartans, Saints, Celtics, Fighting Irish, Volunteers, Buccaneers, Pirates, Ragin’ Cajuns, Vikings, Cowboys, and, yes, Indians, Braves, Chiefs, Warriors, and the names of various Indian tribes and tribal groups such as Chippewas, Choctaws, Utes, Seminoles, Fighting Sioux, and Illini.  But we do not see the Nazis, Mongols, Vandals, Fascists, Cowards, Bums, or the Venal Sycophants.

    Sports teams do not choose names associated with American Indians in order to compliment or insult Native Americans any more than calling a team the Eagles is intended to honor or dishonor a bird, but rather they are attempting to borrow some of the virtue already associated with the chosen symbol.  In the case of Indians, that virtue derives in part from the myth of the Noble Savage--stoic, courageous, spiritual, deeply in tune with nature.  But it also derives from our actual experience with various Indian tribes during the past three centuries.  Even tribes that had developed some form of agriculture and permanent settlements were very much closer to a transition from hunter-gatherer societies than the Europeans with whom they made contact, and, of necessity, very much more aware of and in tune with the environments in which they lived.  In the west, after only 200 years of exposure to the horse, certain tribes became, in the words of one opponent of European descent, “the finest light cavalry in the world.”  In war, Indians from New England to Florida, from the Great Lakes to the Dakotas to the deserts of the Southwest, were known and feared as courageous, cunning, skillful fighters.  Braves were aptly named.

    Most Indians who have given the matter any thought recognize that the use of their image keeps alive positive associations in the minds of average American sports fans.  It is a good thing.  The attitude adopted by the NCAA--that calling someone an “Indian” or a “Brave” is an insult--is about as racist as it is possible to get.  The title “Brave” was considered an honor by the tribes that adopted it.  The NCAA considers it “hostile or abusive.”