Friday, March 25, 2005
Fighting and sometimes striving
The other day, a friend of mine informed me that in west Texas, there’s an area called the Permian Basin, and within said basin is one Permian High School. I style myself as a scholar of Permiana, so of course this information left my mind reeling. What lucky children to get “Permian” emblazoned on their diplomas! Instantly, my thoughts turned to mascots. What noble creature from the Texan red beds could serve as the school mascot for Permian High? The mighty and fearsome Dimetrodon? The steadfast Edaphosaurus? The lovable Eryops? My friend informed me that the Permian High sports teams are called “The Panthers.” The Panthers? THE PANTHERS?!? Surely this was some kind of cruel joke! They have, bar none, the coolest high school moniker on Earth and they squander its associations on the most overused mascot in existence? For shame! This sad state of affairs brought to mind a similar situation back in my high school days. During that inevitable period of the year when representatives from various smaller colleges would come to campus to recruit, I spoke with a person from Mercer College. I asked, rhetorically, what their team was named, knowing full well that the only logical answer could be “The Mercer Mercenaries.” To my shock and horror, she said “The Mercer Bears.” Again, a sick farce. While we’re on the topic of grade school, I should note that my own precollegiate mascots were not much better. We were the “Leopards” in elementary school (in a district also featuring the Wildcats and, yes, Panthers) and the “Greyhounds” in high (the latter name derived from the sad, horribly abused, stray greyhounds that had been released [or escaped] into the slums when their racing days were over and wound up wandering our campus). Happily, in college I got the acceptably decent Phoenix as the general mascot, and the Armadillo for my dorm mascot, the radness of which I still revel in. (The IM basketball team for said dorm was “The Fairy Piglets”, a reference to both the pink fairy armadillo [Chlamyphorus truncatus] and “Hoover hogs”, a Depression-era name for armadillo derived from their status as a last-ditch edible. Speaking of the all-too-few good team names, my department’s Ladies’ Swim Team is currently named the Stellar Sea Cows, which I think is brilliant.) Alas, for all too many students, this is not the case. For every college kid who gets a wicked sweet team name like the Demon Deacons there are a thousand with some tired variant of an angry hound. Well I think it’s time to put a stop to that. I demand a moratorium on all carnivoran-based team names and associated mascots in America. Pro sports long ago exhausted the major possibilities on that front; they can keep the utter banality of Bears or Lions. But it must end there. Stop mining the seemingly infinite regional variant names for puma and lynx, people. No more carnivorans! Nary a bear, cat, dog, or weasel. There are too many great, untapped possibilities out there to allow it. Besides, how can someone have any pride in a name that is screamed out with equal rabidity by those tools three counties over? Exceptions would only be made if the team could demonstrate that their choice of animal had never before been used in such a capacity. By all means, should a scrappy group of can-do youngsters demand to be The Jaguarundis or The Samuel Otis Secondary School Scarlet Kinkajous, let them do it. But otherwise, no dice. If there is never another lion or tiger-based mascot, it will be too soon. Major spheres of life that I’d like to see get better representation in the mascot biz: the oceans and the fossil record. Or both: surely there are schools out in the heart of Paleozoic hill country that would be well suited to adopting “The Fightin’ Trilobites” as their team. Go ‘bites!
A similar overreliance on carnivoran names can be found elsewhere in our culture. In cars, for one. Because these names are trademarked, the mass replication seen in school sports is not a problem, but I’m still going to have to apply the nomenclatural lockdown here. Another problem area is in comic book characters. Werewolves, werepanthers, werebears, wereskunks, weremongeese, you name it. Not to mention all the otherwise humanoid characters that just have carnivoran names and associated ferocity (Wolverine being the highest profile example there). It’s played. So I’m calling the moratorium here as well. (And again, I’m talking American here, were I to try to extend the “no cat people” moratorium to Japan, for instance, manga would just cease to exist.) I know that for the school mascots I said I’d accept unused, obscure carnivorans for consideration, but I’ve got to say, in the superhero realm that’s just kind of sad. When you’re reduced to naming one of your mutants after a nearly toothless, termite-eating species of hyaena (as in Marvel villain The Aardwolf), something is seriously wrong.
So I’m starting the National Commission for the Naming of Primary and Secondary School Teams, Motor Vehicles, and Sequential Art Personages, or NCNPSSTMVSAP (pronounced “nick-nips-stemv-sap,” by the way). Anyone working in any of those industries should submit any prospective names to me for review, lest I, uh, declare sanctions or something. Good luck, and GOOOOOOOOOOOO ‘BITES!
The other day, a friend of mine informed me that in west Texas, there’s an area called the Permian Basin, and within said basin is one Permian High School. I style myself as a scholar of Permiana, so of course this information left my mind reeling. What lucky children to get “Permian” emblazoned on their diplomas! Instantly, my thoughts turned to mascots. What noble creature from the Texan red beds could serve as the school mascot for Permian High? The mighty and fearsome Dimetrodon? The steadfast Edaphosaurus? The lovable Eryops? My friend informed me that the Permian High sports teams are called “The Panthers.” The Panthers? THE PANTHERS?!? Surely this was some kind of cruel joke! They have, bar none, the coolest high school moniker on Earth and they squander its associations on the most overused mascot in existence? For shame! This sad state of affairs brought to mind a similar situation back in my high school days. During that inevitable period of the year when representatives from various smaller colleges would come to campus to recruit, I spoke with a person from Mercer College. I asked, rhetorically, what their team was named, knowing full well that the only logical answer could be “The Mercer Mercenaries.” To my shock and horror, she said “The Mercer Bears.” Again, a sick farce. While we’re on the topic of grade school, I should note that my own precollegiate mascots were not much better. We were the “Leopards” in elementary school (in a district also featuring the Wildcats and, yes, Panthers) and the “Greyhounds” in high (the latter name derived from the sad, horribly abused, stray greyhounds that had been released [or escaped] into the slums when their racing days were over and wound up wandering our campus). Happily, in college I got the acceptably decent Phoenix as the general mascot, and the Armadillo for my dorm mascot, the radness of which I still revel in. (The IM basketball team for said dorm was “The Fairy Piglets”, a reference to both the pink fairy armadillo [Chlamyphorus truncatus] and “Hoover hogs”, a Depression-era name for armadillo derived from their status as a last-ditch edible. Speaking of the all-too-few good team names, my department’s Ladies’ Swim Team is currently named the Stellar Sea Cows, which I think is brilliant.) Alas, for all too many students, this is not the case. For every college kid who gets a wicked sweet team name like the Demon Deacons there are a thousand with some tired variant of an angry hound. Well I think it’s time to put a stop to that. I demand a moratorium on all carnivoran-based team names and associated mascots in America. Pro sports long ago exhausted the major possibilities on that front; they can keep the utter banality of Bears or Lions. But it must end there. Stop mining the seemingly infinite regional variant names for puma and lynx, people. No more carnivorans! Nary a bear, cat, dog, or weasel. There are too many great, untapped possibilities out there to allow it. Besides, how can someone have any pride in a name that is screamed out with equal rabidity by those tools three counties over? Exceptions would only be made if the team could demonstrate that their choice of animal had never before been used in such a capacity. By all means, should a scrappy group of can-do youngsters demand to be The Jaguarundis or The Samuel Otis Secondary School Scarlet Kinkajous, let them do it. But otherwise, no dice. If there is never another lion or tiger-based mascot, it will be too soon. Major spheres of life that I’d like to see get better representation in the mascot biz: the oceans and the fossil record. Or both: surely there are schools out in the heart of Paleozoic hill country that would be well suited to adopting “The Fightin’ Trilobites” as their team. Go ‘bites!
A similar overreliance on carnivoran names can be found elsewhere in our culture. In cars, for one. Because these names are trademarked, the mass replication seen in school sports is not a problem, but I’m still going to have to apply the nomenclatural lockdown here. Another problem area is in comic book characters. Werewolves, werepanthers, werebears, wereskunks, weremongeese, you name it. Not to mention all the otherwise humanoid characters that just have carnivoran names and associated ferocity (Wolverine being the highest profile example there). It’s played. So I’m calling the moratorium here as well. (And again, I’m talking American here, were I to try to extend the “no cat people” moratorium to Japan, for instance, manga would just cease to exist.) I know that for the school mascots I said I’d accept unused, obscure carnivorans for consideration, but I’ve got to say, in the superhero realm that’s just kind of sad. When you’re reduced to naming one of your mutants after a nearly toothless, termite-eating species of hyaena (as in Marvel villain The Aardwolf), something is seriously wrong.
So I’m starting the National Commission for the Naming of Primary and Secondary School Teams, Motor Vehicles, and Sequential Art Personages, or NCNPSSTMVSAP (pronounced “nick-nips-stemv-sap,” by the way). Anyone working in any of those industries should submit any prospective names to me for review, lest I, uh, declare sanctions or something. Good luck, and GOOOOOOOOOOOO ‘BITES!
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