The NCAA Tourney started today and already there have been some mild upsets. That's what makes it so entertaining. Also entertaining is the next installment of the nickname article. If you'd like to see the original article in it's entirety (minus the pics!), you can visit my old blog called Moniker, man.
One of the weirdest (and believe me, the competition is tough!) is the Southern Illinois Salukis. What the hell is a Saluki? Apparently, I am not the first one to ask this question. When Walt Frazier was leading the So. Illinois team to an NIT championship in 1967, sportswriter Jerry Isenberg wrote the following:
Princeton has its Tiger. B.C. has its Eagle,
Rutgers is the Queensmen, a title truly regal.
But from frigid New York City to Kentucky's old Paduchee,
There's just one burning question – what the hell is a Saluki?
Ok, for the record, please note that Rutgers used to be the Queensmen?!? Ugh.
Well, the short answer is, a Saluki is nothing more than a fancy name for a dog. For the long answer, you can visit SIUC's website. Basically, it's an Egyptian dog, and Salukis were accepted as the finest animals a family could possibly possess. Known for their speed and hunting skills, Salukis are the oldest pure-breed dogs in the world with records dating back to 3600 B.C. That's great. And very historical. Not to mention very biblical. And much better than their former name – the Maroons! But, don't you think they could have come up with a better looking representative of that fine animal?
As a resident of Oregon, I cannot, in all good conscience, have a blog such as this without mentioning the University of Oregon Ducks. Ducks. How is that supposed to intimidate another team? Has anyone lately been mauled by a duck. I know it's a Northwest animal, but for pete's sake, there are bears and mountain lions here. It's n
ot like all of the good names were taken by other schools in the state (Oregon State Beavers). It's bad enough to have a wimpy nickname like Ducks, but then they used a symbol ripped off from Walt Disney of Donald Duck.Yeah, they tried to make him look tough, but what do you expect from a mascot that doesn't wear pants?
Fortunately, they've made amends by:
a) coming up with a much better symbol:
b) finding a meaner duck:
and c) getting cool looking helmets:
Go Ducks!
Next weird one: The Manhattan Jaspers. While it has a nice ring to it, I caught myself wondering again, what the hell is a jasper? Oddly enough, the fine folks at Manhattan College, just as at SIUC, have found it necessary to explain the whole thing. (Yeah, that's where I want to go to college – someplace where you have explain the nickname!?)
It's not even as exciting as the Saluki, because, ah-hem, it was named after, uh-hmm , a, errr, a person. Named Jasper. They don't even have a symbol, just the words:
There's the Liberty Flames:
(Hey, that's not a flame, that's an eagle. They need to take the same zoology class as the students at Southern Utah!)And
there's the University of Illinois – Chicago:Yeah! That's more like it – now that's a flame!
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