I had the pleasure last Sunday of sitting next to my former boss, Walt Harrison, president of the University of Hartford. We were both in Columbia, SC, for the Lady Hawks’ WNIT tournament game against the Lady Gamecocks of the University of South Carolina. Neither of us took much pleasure in the drubbing the Hawks endured at the hands of the tall and athletic USC team.
Walt is a high-ranking official within the NCAA, and I’m sure he’d like a nickel for every time someone asks him about the organization’s policy toward Native American mascots like Illiniwek, the University of Illinois mascot who left for his happy hunting grounds a month ago. Poor Illiniwek was just the latest in a series of such defenestrations.
During one of the many low points of the game Sunday, I suggested to Walt that he and the NCAA turn their attention next to the problem of cross-gender mascots. A Lady Gamecock, for example, is an oxymoron, since a cock is, by definition, a male. There must be something in the water in South Carolina; at Coastal Carolina University, the nickname for the women’s teams is the Lady Chanticleers. Again, a chanticleer is a rooster. This must be very confusing to young children, as it is to an old fogy like me.
Of course, we live in an age of political correctness, and every group has the right to be, or not to be, as it sees fit. So, on second thought, I rescind my suggestion to Walt. The NCAA doesn’t need the burden of a cockfight with the transgender mascot lobby.