What Team Names Tell Us about America

American sports team’s all have names, wonderful nicknames that fans adopt. Because some Americans negotiate identity through their team loyalties, the team names serve as metaphors that can shape how we view ourselves. Team names, however, also remind us about our history and who we were and are.

We tend to forget this with many modern team names created by marketing departments or focus groups. But team names often possessed an organic relation to the team’s place or origin. Traditional American sports names reflect our diversity and distinctiveness.

1.   Team names point to American work and production.

2.   Team names point to a simpler unrefined time of origins.

3.   Team names call up classic avatars of competition, warriors and history.

4.   Team names hint at the geographic movement as teams abandon one region and move to another to pursue profit

5.   Team names give an insight into the country’s fraught relations with American Indians.

My favorite and most authentic set of names link the teams to what we produced in our regions. These names are grounded in American history and work. States proudly connect their livelihood to their universities.  Think Purdue boilermakers, Wichita State wheat shockers, Nebraska cornhuskers or Texas longhorns to name a few. When professional teams alighted with cities they often linked their team name to the world of work and production. Pittsburgh Steelers, Milwaukee Brewers (original and recent) and the Washington Senators aligned with the original industry of a city.  

History makes some of these names archeological relics. No one connects steel with Pittsburgh anymore or longhorn cattle with Texas wealth production (Houston Oilers anyone?). More recent teams try to bring forward the tradition such as the once and future Seattle Sonics (celebrating Boeing’s aborted supersonic airliner) or Seattle’s Mariners link to its still vibrant air and shipping industries. Houston Oilers catch up with modern Texas wealth production while Dallas Cowboys connect to the Texas ideology and narrative about itself. My Kansas City Royals hark to the city’s long time center of live stock trading. My favorite remains the only team owned by its city, the Greenbay Packers for their meatpacking days. In the future I am looking forward to Bay area nanobots.

These work-based names identify as iconic Americana where work defines us. Only in America do we first ask each other is “what do you do?” Work, purpose and personhood have always bonded in our minds, and many team names reflect that.

Baseball names give us another insight into a much simpler era where the color of socks or red hats sufficed to name a team. We misspell “sox” but we have the Boston and Cincinnati red socks or the Chicago white sox. The long time St. Louis Browns began as brown socks (I mean really, brown socks!). Baseball’s Brooklyn Dodgers celebrated the borough’s skills at dodging trolleys and of course the Yankees began as the Highlanders but ended as the Yankees a nickname to capture its American league origins and become synonymous with the entrepreneur spirit of an age.

American teams adopted lots of names from local and classical history. San Francisco’s growth occurred thanks to the 49’ers pouring in to search for gold. Oklahoma proudly proclaims itself the Sooners honoring the illegal migrants who jumped the gun to settle the last open Indian Territory. An early Boston baseball team captured the feel with Beaneaters. Not many remember that the New York Knicks really are the knickerbockers referring to the silk stocking elite who ruled New York City for centuries.

Another vein of history-based names comes from references to an early American passion for antiquity. This is truer of colleges than professional teams. These names call to mind proud but ancient warrior traditions. The Michigan State Spartans and USC Trojans lead an army of classical myths. (Did anyone tell them that the Trojans and Spartans actually lost?) These historical names can invite controversy as schools like Mississippi rethink their history and relation to the Confederacy. The Minnesota Vikings gesture to the strong Scandinavian roots of the area. Hoards of colleges devoted to the pursuit of knowledge celebrate bloodthirsty pillaging Vikings who tore down civilized learning as their team model, although nothing quite beats the utter barbarism of Idaho’s namesake Vandals.

Humans love to the employ totems that conjure the power, strength, cunning and fierceness of the natural world to infuse their groups. These totems refer to a nature red in tooth and claw. Many states summoned native animals they admired like Michigan Wolverines, Colorado Buffalos, Wisconsin Badgers or Florida Gators. Feline names about with tigers, lions, cougars, panthers galore. Early professional teams ranged far and wide with Chicago Cubs or Detroit’s Tigers and Lions. California used a bear on their republic’s flag and both California and UCLA claim to be bears and bruins. Graduates of universities carry it further and call themselves by name. People will proclaim I’m a Husky or a Gator or Wolverine! We also have the avian contingent of avatars. My own Boston College eagles join many hawks and eagles and other predators. But then we find the Baltimore Orioles and the St. Louis cardinals. I love cardinals most of all, but really, Cardinals as symbols of competitive prowess?

Beyond the courage, cunning and ferocity of warrior and natural totems, some teams always evoked forces of nature such as the Iowa State cyclones. More recently the WNBA gathered a large number of earth elemental almost pagan names—the storm, sky, sun, comets, sparks, and shock. They remind me a bit of a feminist take on getting away from male stereotype names to imbue nature elementals into the women’s teams.

No reflection on team names would be complete how names reveal that professional teams are capitalist enterprises. Their owners will happily abandon one region for another in pursuit of better profits. This disease afflicts the NBA more than any other sport. No one dodges trolleys in Los Angeles. But the Brooklyn Dodgers took the name when they abandoned Brooklyn for LA fifty plus years ago as harbingers of move west and south of the country. No real lakes exist near LA but the LA Lakers still carry their moniker from their sojourn in Minnesota where the Lakers made lots of sense. In one of the silliest name migrations Utah has the Jazz which they stole from New Orleans who stole the Hornets from Charlotte. Last week as an act of contrition, the Hornets will now become the Pelicans to connect to that indigenous grand bird which is the state’s namesake. Some names travel well and resonate with history. The Oakland Athletics kept “athletics” through their travels to Kansas City (the team I grew up with) from Philadelphia or the Atlanta Braves who carried the grand name from Boston to Milwaukee to Atlanta. Both Oakland and Atlanta proudly claim all the great stars of the team/names long meandering histories.

The team name Brave points to how many team names can illuminate our nation’s fraught relation with Native American history. Leaving aside modern political correctness charges, most team names like the braves or Seminoles or Indians honored a narrative of warrior society that emphasized bravery, strength, tenacity and hunter’s mind, although I will never figure out the pure moral ugliness of Redskins. We can get into university-based discussions of whether this “appropriates” cultural identities by dominant white male culture. These postmodern positions led the NCAA to fight to banish such names from colleges. But the proud names carried by many teams evoked a different image affiliated with the warrior traditions of historical and natural totem names.

I think the wealth of team names reflect the wild diversity of the country and its many contradictions in its history. They remind us that naming our teams names ourselves.

Student Athletics as Moral Endeavor II

Part II

The first promise singles out the college’s commitment to the student. This promise takes on special urgency because often the student may only be 16 to 18 when they make the commitment. When the student athlete is the first person in their family to go to college, the college’s promise, made by the coach, to get them an education and not just a chance to play sports or become a professional athlete takes on a unique and powerful moral imperative.

The university’s obligation is doubly important because if the student athlete does not leave with a credible degree, while they will have had a marvelous four years doing what they love, but at the age of 22, their athletic career will be over and their adult life will begin. The college promises more than learning athletics, it promises learning what skills the college can offer to prepare for adult life.

If the university does not meet this promise, then the university simply exploits the passion and promise of the student athletes. In this the commentators are correct, the university must provide strong academic support for the student athletes to succeed on this onerous path.

We need to remember that colleges make these promises to any student they accept. In the case of student athletes the college requires them to compete as a condition of acceptance. The college can provide this support through regular college programs or athletic specific programs, but the school has this obligation. The college’s promise requires the university to provide several critical dimensions of support.

1)                    Coaching and personnel for training and medical care to support athletic development and achievement.

2)                   Academic and personal support to learn in the academic context and develop a personal identity beyond being an athlete.

3)                   College support requires multiple levels of resources:

1)   Five years of support to graduate plus strong summer school support. Huge numbers of regular college students now take 5-6 years to graduate. The sheer time and energy demands on college athletes means the student athletes need the extra time and summer support to have a good chance to graduate.

2)   Personnel to work with the student to ensure that he or she understands the complicated NCAA graduation progress requirements. This advice moves the student on a trajectory towards graduation but also keeps them eligible. To be honest in the early years of college, many student athletes identify primarily as athletes and getting them to study will be driven as much by their desire to stay eligible as to develop as an academic student.

3)    Help for students to navigate the tensions of taking exams and getting assignments in and working with professors when athletes must travel as part of their scholarship obligations. More than a few professors resent athletic travel interference with classroom academics, and student athletes need academic support needs to bridge the tensions.

4)  Tutoring and study tables will help students stay up with academics while spending 30-40 hours a week on athletics. Learning academically and athletically can be harsh and hard. The reality is most student athletes, even the best students, struggle during the first two years of college trying to balance this. Honestly very few freshmen, period, are truly ready for the academic demands of college life. This support bridges the critical first two years.

5)    This academic support is absolutely necessary when dealing with the athletes recruited from disadvantages backgrounds. Often student athletes from wretched urban or rural school systems need tutorial support and academic incentives to recover and stay on track as they struggle to catch up to the skills levels needed to be a self sustaining college student. Without this compensatory support at the beginning, disadvantaged student athletes will fail.

Many colleges fail student athletes at this academic nexus. College athletics becomes exploitation if schools do not support academic learning along with the athletic learning. Especially at the second level of division 1 and division 2, athletes do not get the academic support they need during the first two years. The NCAA and conferences are fighting to and must continue to push and incentivize colleges to provide academic support to address the reality of student life.

You see this failure manifest when the NCAA votes down regulations that would provide more academic and financial support for student athletes. The class based votes of the NCAA where mid-majors and lower level D1 schools vote against paying true cost of attendance or against academic reforms to avoid the costs demonstrates this moral failure.

Many NCAA officials believe that if schools are going to enjoy the benefits of intercollegiate athletics and exposure, especially those that involve recruiting underserved minority students, schools have the moral obligation to invest in the academic support required by the promise to provide the resource support for persons to flourish as students and athletes.

The pressure on this issue must never falter. Schools will funnel new resources into salaries and facilities, but it must also go to academic support. Conferences should be pushing this as a condition of membership. One of the real benefits of the new penalties for low graduation rates is that it forces schools to either recruit better prepared students or invest in better academic support for students.

In the end, however, the reality of the success or failure of the enterprise rests with the young man or woman who make the promise and face their possibilities as students of athletics, academics and life.

Student Athletics as a Moral Endeavor I & II

Student Athletics as a Moral Endeavor

I remain an idealist about the reality of being a student athlete, a chastened idealist, but still committed to the ideal. The ideal of being a student athlete should have moral power and place demands on us. I believe the moral standing grows from three promises that the athlete and the university make to each other. I will discuss them in detail and their implications for both the university and the student athlete.

These promises make the education of a student athlete a moral endeavor that flows from the promises. Here are the three promises that anchor student athlete into the moral life of the university and being a student.

•  The university promises the student athlete to provide the support and resources to grow to his or her highest potential as a student of academics and athletics.
• The student promises to the university to bring his or her highest commitment, talent and energy to develop their potential as a student both academically and athletically.
• The student promises to him or herself and often their God that she or he will be true to their talent and future and use the time to mature into the best person they can become.

These promises link being a student with both academics and athletics. Students are learners, and they learn and master both academic and athletic domains.

My friend Ed Taylor the Vice Provost & Dean of Academic Affairs at University of Washington insists that education is a moral endeavor. Its morality arises from the mutual commitment by student and teacher to help the student grow into his or her potential. This involves not just mastering technical skills to survive and achieve in a job or sport. The education should develop personal attributes to help a person succeed in life. The student can grow into a person of character, belief and commitment.

I believe Ed is correct, and that the moral nature of education means that the above promises should hold true for any “student” at an educational institution. The three promises reinforce two issues that apply to education and to intercollegiate sports.

§  First, accepting a student means that the college has assessed that the accepted student can succeed.

§  Second, the institution will provide the resources and support for any accepted student to succeed.

In American higher education as many of one third of students may come in with deficits in writing or math skills. Modern universities provide numerous introductory or remedial writing and math classes to bridge the student’s needs in this area. Universities also provide counseling, health services and guidance to support career and course planning.

The other side of this moral equation addresses the responsibility of the student. Professors and colleges cannot force a student to learn. A college should provide support, teaching, knowledge and opportunity. In the end, however, the student must study for class, take advantage of counseling resources, or visit with the professor or TA. The individual student must read the books, take the time to memorize or think hard about the assignments—students make the decision to forgo other opportunities whether drinking, partying or working to master knowledge and skills offered by the university.

Many students work today to go to college and balance working 20-30 hours a week with learning in classroom. Numerous students find their true passions in extra-curricular activities, service learning or internships where they invest time energy to flourish. At its best class teaching and experiential learning reinforce each other.

College education will not stick and achievement will not occur without effort and attention by the individual student.

The second promise of the student locks this in. Students promise to the institution to bring their attention and effort to work, grow and learn. Any teacher will tell you the worst experience in teaching happens when a teacher faces a classroom where no one wants to be there and no one cares about learning what the class offers.

The second promise implies the success of a student depends upon the inner dialogue students have with themselves about what they desire to achieve, whom they aspire to become and what their conscience and God ask of them.

Now let’s go back to the moral world of the student athlete. I am well aware that the cynics and college-educated ex-student athlete TV commentators make careers out of bashing the NCAA. Usually they focus exclusively upon the less than .o5 percent of the 450,000 student athletes who might move on to 3.6 year average careers in professional sports. Leaving these ultra elite revenue sport students aside for this discussion, we need to remember that being a student athlete, period, is hard. All student athletes tread a hard road.

Student athletes gain access to colleges, often ones they might not get into on academic or experience merit, by virtue of their athletic skill. They are expected as a condition of admission to compete on behalf of a university and contribute to the university’s team athletic success. This involves at least 25-40 hours a week devoted to practice, film watching, conditioning, travel, medical work and actual competition.

The amount of work spent on athletic achievement goes up as the division rises. This is partially due to elite status but also connected to the fact that Division 1 & 2 offer scholarships, and student athletes feel a strong moral obligation to devote that time. It also reflects the reality that most student athletes are pursuing a passion. They are competing in activities they love and have mastered. The athletes want to excel and play and for 99.5%, college is the last chance they will have to play.

The experience of achieving in an activity a person is committed to and excels at is rare and exceptional for any human beings. Harvey Perlman the Chancellor of Nebraska-Lincoln often muses that he wishes more students had the chance to be as passionate about their college activities as student athletes.

Being a student of academics and athletics at the same time takes immense effort, discipline and time management by student athletes. Student athletes know this, and all the graduation surveys reflect learning time management and self-discipline as two of the major attributes and accomplishments of student athletes. It is exhausting but these attributes undergird the student athlete’s promise:

1)        these attributes grow from the dedication to study and learn their craft as athletes and contribute to their university and team and individual desire to achieve.

2)        this self-discipline and time management enables them to study and learn in class, study homework and hand in assignments and take exams despite the time they devote to athletics.

This life and dedication of time and attention reveals the strength and importance of the two promises that student athletes make to their team/school but also to themselves and their God.  

Part II will look more closely at the first promise, the one the college makes to the student athlete.

______________________________

The first promise singles out the college’s commitment to the student. This promise takes on special urgency because often the student may only be 16 to 18 when they make the commitment. When the student athlete is the first person in their family to go to college, the college’s promise, made by the coach, to get them an education and not just a chance to play sports or become a professional athlete takes on a unique and powerful moral imperative.

The university’s obligation is doubly important because if the student athlete does not leave with a credible degree, while they will have had a marvelous four years doing what they love, but at the age of 22, their athletic career will be over and their adult life will begin. The college promises more than learning athletics, it promises learning what skills the college can offer to prepare for adult life.

If the university does not meet this promise, then the university simply exploits the passion and promise of the student athletes. In this the commentators are correct, the university must provide strong academic support for the student athletes to succeed on this onerous path.

We need to remember that colleges make these promises to any student they accept. In the case of student athletes the college requires them to compete as a condition of acceptance. The college can provide this support through regular college programs or athletic specific programs, but the school has this obligation. The college’s promise requires the university to provide several critical dimensions of support.

1)                    Coaching and personnel for training and medical care to support athletic development and achievement.

2)                   Academic and personal support to learn in the academic context and develop a personal identity beyond being an athlete.

3)                   College support requires multiple levels of resources:

1)   Five years of support to graduate plus strong summer school support. Huge numbers of regular college students now take 5-6 years to graduate. The sheer time and energy demands on college athletes means the student athletes need the extra time and summer support to have a good chance to graduate.

2)   Personnel to work with the student to ensure that he or she understands the complicated NCAA graduation progress requirements. This advice moves the student on a trajectory towards graduation but also keeps them eligible. To be honest in the early years of college, many student athletes identify primarily as athletes and getting them to study will be driven as much by their desire to stay eligible as to develop as an academic student.

3)    Help for students to navigate the tensions of taking exams and getting assignments in and working with professors when athletes must travel as part of their scholarship obligations. More than a few professors resent athletic travel interference with classroom academics, and student athletes need academic support needs to bridge the tensions.

4)  Tutoring and study tables will help students stay up with academics while spending 30-40 hours a week on athletics. Learning academically and athletically can be harsh and hard. The reality is most student athletes, even the best students, struggle during the first two years of college trying to balance this. Honestly very few freshmen, period, are truly ready for the academic demands of college life. This support bridges the critical first two years.

5)    This academic support is absolutely necessary when dealing with the athletes recruited from disadvantages backgrounds. Often student athletes from wretched urban or rural school systems need tutorial support and academic incentives to recover and stay on track as they struggle to catch up to the skills levels needed to be a self sustaining college student. Without this compensatory support at the beginning, disadvantaged student athletes will fail.

Many colleges fail student athletes at this academic nexus. College athletics becomes exploitation if schools do not support academic learning along with the athletic learning. Especially at the second level of division 1 and division 2, athletes do not get the academic support they need during the first two years. The NCAA and conferences are fighting to and must continue to push and incentivize colleges to provide academic support to address the reality of student life.

You see this failure manifest when the NCAA votes down regulations that would provide more academic and financial support for student athletes. The class based votes of the NCAA where mid-majors and lower level D1 schools vote against paying true cost of attendance or against academic reforms to avoid the costs demonstrates this moral failure.

Many NCAA officials believe that if schools are going to enjoy the benefits of intercollegiate athletics and exposure, especially those that involve recruiting underserved minority students, schools have the moral obligation to invest in the academic support required by the promise to provide the resource support for persons to flourish as students and athletes.

The pressure on this issue must never falter. Schools will funnel new resources into salaries and facilities, but it must also go to academic support. Conferences should be pushing this as a condition of membership. One of the real benefits of the new penalties for low graduation rates is that it forces schools to either recruit better prepared students or invest in better academic support for students.

In the end, however, the reality of the success or failure of the enterprise rests with the young man or woman who make the promise and face their possibilities as students of athletics, academics and life.

Sports Ethics: "Let's Do This"

I was at a Husky women's basketball game last week near the bench. Fans are screaming and the score is tight. Pressure rises.   The team huddles, listens to the coach and right before breaking, the team leaders yells, “let’s do this!”

It’s a strong appeal that we hear in all aspects of life, and I believe it carries real ethical and psychological power. Let’s parse out the meaning and power of this classic sports exhortation.

“Let’s Do This!” demands action. Leaders exhort their group to unite and take action in sport and life. The phrase commands a moral and psychological demand that focuses the quest for excellence and victory in sports and life. The words parse out in a very critical way that makes real sense in sport but in life.

THIS—An indefinite pronoun situates athletes and people in an immediate context. No one needs to spell it out. The word informs everyone that the task exists immediately before the group. High performing individuals and athletes live in the exact moment being fully aware of the situational complexity of what they face and whom their opponents are and what obstacles confront them. THIS needs no explication. It assumes that the individual team members all make themselves fully present. They know the goal and know the tasks. The word assumes and demands situational awareness.

LET’S—(Let Us) A compound verb/object accomplishes two vital goals. The US pinpoints every person as members of a team with a common goal. The phrase unites the team and creates a shared sense of responsibility. Using these words puts everyone on notice that no one person can do this. Everyone must contribute and must fully engage right now at this point in time with this task confronting them.

Underlying the assertion of a team identity and responsibility lies the belief that everyone bonded by the call possesses the knowledge and the skill to accomplish a task. Individuals make this claim when they can presume an history—that the individuals in the huddle have practiced and mastered skill and coordinated activity. The claim welds together a group identity and responsibility with a shared expertise and focus.

But the US only covers the contraction aspect. “LET” unleashes another active imperative. This phrase is not a question and it is not a request. The word let has a sort of subjunctive mode to it, a should, an imperative dimension. But rather than just a direct order—“do this now,” “I command  you” or “I order you.” The verb infers an authoritative or commanding invitation as in let’s go to the beach or let’s go inside. Let’s is ambiguous enough to hint that the person uttering it does not possess full authority to order or chooses not to. Rather “let us” or let’s invites people to commit. The authority hides behind and reinforces the team identity.

Let’s addresses each member of the team as an imperative to pull together, to act together and stake their identities together in THIS task before them. The locution flattens the hierarchy of authority and elicits dedication rather than subordination. It brings commitment not just compliances.

That is why the locution is so interesting and important in sports and life. The moral import of the phrase involves a coming together for a shared purpose as a team to achieve the task in front of the group.

DO—Simple, clean and to the point. The verb do grows from deep linguistic roots endures as one of the oldest and most direct action words in English. The verb promises to act, to put in place  andto make happen. A promise and direction cannot be more simple and more direct.

Just like the “this,” the verb do does not specify the exact action, rather it means that the group will perform what is necessary to achieve the goal. By its very imperative elusiveness, the verb matches the pronoun “this.” Do promises the individuals will act in a necessary way linked to the goal—it links action and goal to the shared responsibility of the team.

Sometimes the words sound so simple, yet they evoke so much and depend upon a deep moral and psychological connection.

Let’s do this epitomizes the stance of a team that commits to be present to a situation and perform the tasks necessary to achieve it. But underneath, it evokes the dedication and mutual regard and coordination any group of “us” needs.