That being said, I am thoroughly disappointed in the way North Dakota was represented on the national stage.Where to begin? When the NDSU Football team won their fifth FCS NCAA football championship, the first thing their fans did was yell Sioux Sux. The chant was heard on national television. Seriously, that's more embarrassing than UND fans chanting "Let's Go Sioux" or "Sioux Forever". Guess what? No one thought about the Bison after #raising8. No one started the "F#*k the Bison" chant.
Issue one: the persistence of cheering for the Fighting Sioux. It is embarrassing to see a mascot, perceived by many to be racially insensitive at best, so emphatically championed during one of our state’s brief moments in the spotlight.
It was 16 years ago that a collection of faculty representing UND’s Indian Related Programs wrote the nickname was perceived as “promoting the oppression of Native people, and placing UND at great risk for practicing and promoting state-supported, institutionalized racism.”
Furthermore, you do us no favors with hashtags like #RollTribe, as any diversity scholar worth his or her salt can describe the racially and stereotypically-charged history of that word. And no matter how desperately you claim to be honoring the native peoples of this land, the reality is that you care more about a college mascot than the people it purportedly represents.
So, UND fans yelling Sioux at a sporting event embarrasses the state more than NDSU Bison athletes' voter registration fraud scandal? Or how about the NDSU athletes stealing from Best Buy? Even better, how about football players getting into a fight downtown Fargo, in the middle of the night? I know, I know, that guy started the fight, right? The story still made the national news.
He who lives in a glass house, shouldn't cast stones.
Let's see, the NCAA holds the FCS title game in something called Paris, Tx at a soccor field. This year the Frozen Four was held in Tampa at their NHL arena. The Thursday night crowd was around 18,000 and the championship game was played before 20,000 plus, nearly a full house. I believe that is more than bison drew to Paris, Tx.
ReplyDeleteOk Mr Unknown. I'm a Bison fan which happens to cheer for the Sioux hockey team. They will always be known as Sioux to me. This idiot who wrote this article is a complete butt hurt entitled no brain idiot. As for your comments about "Paris" Texas. It is in Frisco Texas which is a suburb of Dallas. Toyota Stadium to be exact. Yes 20,800 is the capacity and you can thank the NCAA for letting it be hosted on a smaller venue. You comparing of the stadiums is like comparing a Porche to a Prius. One is owned by a tier 1 professional team while the other is owned by the city. Don't let some "die hard" get your panties in a bunch! Either way, it's a ND school taking home NCAA trophy hardware!
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