#74. Lack of any Black-themed Mascots at American Universities or Colleges

College football season kicks off the 2009 season tonight and the anticipation for watching athlete-students compete in amateur athletics has never been greater. Whereas the National Football League includes 32 teams in large cities throughout the nation, college football is spread out in 120 different cities (only referring to Division 1A or FBS teams) and alumni of these schools revel in the memories that are created Saturday’s in the fall for their entire life.

Interestingly, all colleges have nicknames that accompany their school name (Alabama Crimson Tide, Texas Longhorns, etc.) and they stir just as much passion in the alumni hearts as the games themselves.

Look at how Auburn University graduates say "War Eagle" to each other when one of them is caught wearing Auburn University paraphernalia. Beloved mascots included Ole Miss' Colonel Reb, which has been banned on sidelines due to his divisive nature, since college football at historically white colleges is now performed by the few Black people on campus:

"In the summer of 2003, Ole Miss students, alumni and fans were shocked with Chancellor Khayat and Athletic Director Pete Boone's decision to strip Colonel Reb from our school. Boone's reasoning was the mascot "doesn't fit anything we do." At no point did student or alumni input factor into the decision to get rid of the mascot."

Since Black people, as we have shown through the University of Georgia's 2008 Freshmen enrollment (of the 108 Black Freshmen who entered the school of more than 33,000, nearly 25 percent where on the football team), make up the majority of FBS teams, anything that is deemed hateful or racist must be removed so as not to offend the Black people playing football.

Almost anything offends Black people these days and the last thing white alumni of major university's want is to lose the ability to watch Black people play football at their historically white schools and more importantly, not waste hours of their lives following high school seniors during the recruiting process (like www.rivals.com or www.scout.com).

Interestingly, the one aspect that might make Black people interested in attending historically white colleges - as opposed to the paltry few who enrolled (or got in) at UGA in 2008 - would be to have a few universities proudly having Black-centric nicknames.

In the United States, hundreds of colleges (both FBS and FBC) have animal themed nicknames (Tigers, Bears, Panthers, Bulldogs, etc) and hundreds more are named for Indian tribes (Seminoles, Fightin Illini, etc.). Interestingly, a lot of pressure has been exerted on university's for daring to use Indian nicknames as that is deemed insensitive:

"The use of Native American mascots in sports has become a contentious issue in the United States and Canada. Americans have had a history of "playing Indian" that dates back to at least the 1700s. Many individuals admire the heroism and romanticism evoked by the classic Native American image, but many too view the use of mascots as both offensive and demeaning (especially amongst Native Americans). Despite the concerns that have been raised, many Native American mascots are still used in American sports from the elementary to the professional level."

Black people would love to have schools (especially historically white schools) have nicknames after famous Black people, historical Black tribes and warrior's or for Black achievement.

But, it is the dreaded white race that is the beneficiary of hundreds of university nicknames and logos that far exceeds the use of Indian tribes and Indian nicknames in the United States.

Let's take a look at the numerous historic white people from around the world and throughout history that are nicknames for major colleges and universities:

"Ambassador's, Archers, Athenas, Argonauts, Athenians, Battlers, Battling Bishops, Belles, Black Knights, Blue Raiders, Cadets, Canoneers, Cavaliers, Celtics, Celts, Colonials, Colonels, Commodores, Continentals, Clippers, Conquerors, Cornhuskers, Cowboys, Crusaders, Defenders, Dukes, Dutch, Dutchmen, Engineers, Explorers, Flying Dutchmen, Flying Fleet, Friars, Generals, Gentlemen, Giants, Governors, Highland Cavaliers, Highlanders, Hilltoppers, Irish, Jets, Judges, Kingsmen, Knights, Ladies, Lakers, Loggers, Lumberjacks, Marauders, Mariners, Mavericks, Medics, Miners, Midshipmen, Minutemen, Patriots, Pilots, Pioneers, Pipers, Pirates, Poets, Praying Colonels, Raiders, Rebels, Spartans, Royals, Scots, Titans, Tritons, Trojans, Vikings, Volunteers, Warriors and 49ers"

All of these above nicknames are for white people and those of European descent. Not for Indians nor any other race. They depict memories of white people of the past and conjure ideas of men who knew who they were and didn't bow down to political correctness.

Black people play football wearing the colors of these teams and say nothing about it (save for Ole Miss). Yet, Black people have not one school nickname based on their history nor their warriors.

In fact, the University of Alabama- Birmingham used to have a white mascot named Blaze, but he was deemed "too white":

"The University of Alabama at Birmingham has dropped Blaze, the mascot for its athletic teams, which are called the Blazers. Blaze, who was a big, rough-and-tumble Norseman, drew fire for being too mean, too masculine, and too white. Grant Shingleton, sports information director for the university, explained that poor Blaze was, “I hate to use the word — too Aryan.”

What would a Black nickname be, you might ask? Based on their opinion of him, SBPDL would recommend "Obama's"...

Stuff Black People Don't Like includes the lack of any Black people themed mascots at university's or college's, for the Indian's have been romanticised by white people and get nicknames and white people are the basis of thousands of nicknames for American college teams. Black people play a lot of college football for white people's enjoyment and yet, they have not one nickname. They play for school's like the USC Trojans, which glorify the past greatness of white people and the sight of these Men of Troy might make current white people began to question why that past was so great.

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#72. Athlete-Students Graduating from College

As SBPDL celebrates the 2009 College Football season's imminent arrival, we must pause to remember why we are doing this.

College football - and the National Football League - hold adult men in perpetual captivity during fall weekends and this vice leaves them incapable of performing any other activity during this time period.

Grown men head back to their alma maters to watch 18-22-year-olds play football on Saturday's and then on Sunday, they watch individuals who have the innate capacity to fail the Wonderlic Test in glorious fashion play an occasional football in between commercials.

College football is big business, as one conference (The SEC) has just signed a television contract worth $205 million through 2025. College football is a massive business that allows many schools to survive and flourish, and causes other conferences to fold up if they can't negotiate to keep their product on television.

Were it not for college football, Black people - especially males - would not be attending historically white colleges:

"Data show that Black male students often feel isolated, marginalized and invisible on predominantly White campuses. Dr. Mac Stewart, the chief diversity officer and vice provost for minority affairs at OSU, says that was the reality officials at the university discovered with the Black men on campus. “We had to do something to address this issue,” he says. “We first started with a focus group of Black male students. They made some suggestions.”

Black athletes, especially college football players at the 120 FBS schools, are some of the most notable people on their campus, so only if coaches could find a way to get more Black people on their teams, then perhaps Black people wouldn't feel marginalized.

Looking at The University of Georgia is an interesting case study in examining the reality of Black people's inability to get into schools, unless they possess the all important life skill of running with the football:

"Since the late 1990s, Black student enrollment at the University of Georgia, the state’s flagship university, has hovered between 5 percent and 6 percent, despite promises by the university’s administration to improve the school’s pursuit of Black students. In 1998, Blacks constituted 6.2 percent of the university’s enrollment. After significant dips in 2001 and 2003, the university rebounded, increasing its Black enrollment to nearly 6.8 percent in 2007. But the number of Black men remained disproportionately low.

"The numbers took a dramatic turn in 2008, however. In the fall of that year, 104 Black males enrolled at the university, an 18 percent jump from fall 2007."

If, in 2008 only 104 Black people enrolled at UGA, that means that nearly 25 percent of that class were from the football team, as the 2008 recruiting class for the Bulldog football team (not including walk-ons) were largely Black people.

While in school, these Black people help their nearly all-white institutions of higher learning defeat other Black people attending all-white institutions of higher learning.

But what doesn't happen, unlike the few white people who play football for these cash making cows, is that the Black athlete-students do not graduate, whereas the white student-athletes graduate:

"Georgia Tech’s football players had the nation’s best average SAT score, 1028 of a possible 1600, and best average high school GPA, 3.39 of a possible 4.0 in the core curriculum. But Tech’s football players still scored 315 SAT points lower on average than their classmates.

At the University of Georgia, the average football SAT was 949, which is 239 points behind the average for an undergraduate student at Georgia — and 79 points behind Tech’s football average. The Bulldogs’ average high school GPA was 2.77, or 45th out of 53 teams for which football GPAs were available. Their SAT average ranked them 22nd."

More to the point, is this story, which also discuss the lack of Black head coaches, as it points out the graduation rates of Black people at major college football schools:

"...report released Monday by The Institute for Diversity & Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida. It shows that the gap between the graduation success rates for white and African-American football student-athletes has increased from 14 percent in the 2007 report to 17 percent in the new study, although the grad rates for African-American football student-athletes has increased. While the 2008 numbers show that 76 percent of white football student-athletes graduated, only 59 percent of African-American football student-athletes graduated. The Institute arrived at its findings by reviewing data collected by the NCAA from member schools over a six-year period, using the freshman classes that entered college from 1998 through 2001."

So, were it not for college football, Black people would barely be attending historically white colleges at all (here is a list of the top 25 football programs in 2004 and also the Black ratio of athletes to general students. Note the graduation rates for some of the schools white players... they look a little off):

Top 25                          Black Football          White Football
                  Players Graduation %    Players Graduation %

1 UNIV. OF S. CAL.                        61%                     60%
2 LOUISIANA STATE U.                      34%                     56%
3 UNIV. OF OKLA.                          28%                     41%
4 UNIV. OF MICHIGAN                       36%                     58%
5 UTEXAS-AUSTIN                           33%                     45%
6 UTENN-KNOXVILLE                         26%                     78%
7 OHIO STATE UNIV.                        28%                     58%
8 KANSAS STATE UNIV.                      52%                     64%
9 FLORIDA STATE UNIV.                     43%                     65%
10 UNIV. OF MIAMI                          47%                     57%
11 UNIV. OF GEORGIA                        51%                     86%
12 PURDUE UNIV.                            53%                     63%
13 UNIV. OF IOWA                           45%                     62%
14 MIAMI UNIV. (OHIO)                      25%                     70%
15 WASH. STATE UNIV.                       47%                     71%
16 UNIV. OF MISS.                          52%                     53%
17 UNIV. OF FLA.                           44%                     38%
18 BOISE STATE UNIV.                       57%                     47%
19 TEXAS CHRISTIAN U.                      50%                     61%
20 W.VIRGINIA UNIV.                        36%                     58%
21 OKLAHOMA STATE                          32%                     52%
22 UNEB.-LINCOLN                           41%                     69%
23 UMD-COLLEGE PARK                        38%                     71%
24 UMINN-TWIN CITIES                       31%                     58%
25 UNIV. OF UTAH                           42%                     ***

                  Fall 2002-03 FT Enrollment

Top 25                        Black    Black Student
                  Student %       Athletes %

1 UNIV. OF S. CAL.            6.5%            34.0%
2 LOUISIANA STATE U.          9.3%            33.2%
3 UNIV. OF OKLA.              6.3%            27.2%
4 UNIV. OF MICHIGAN           8.1%            16.8%
5 UTEXAS-AUSTIN               3.6%            24.9%
6 UTENN-KNOXVILLE             7.1%            28.7%
7 OHIO STATE UNIV.            8.1%            16.3%
8 KANSAS STATE UNIV.          2.6%            21.8%
9 FLORIDA STATE UNIV.        12.2%            34.5%
10 UNIV. OF MIAMI              9.3%            36.2%
11 UNIV. OF GEORGIA            5.1%            31.4%
12 PURDUE UNIV.                3.2%            18.8%
13 UNIV. OF IOWA               2.3%            13.7%
14 MIAMI UNIV. (OHIO)          3.6%            15.0%
15 WASH. STATE UNIV.           3.1%            22.1%
16 UNIV. OF MISS.             13.0%            40.6%
17 UNIV. OF FLA.               8.6%            30.0%
18 BOISE STATE UNIV.           1.2%            14.2%
19 TEXAS CHRISTIAN U.          4.8%            33.0%
20 W.VIRGINIA UNIV.            4.3%            25.1%
21 OKLAHOMA STATE              3.3%            20.1%
22 UNEB.-LINCOLN               2.0%            13.9%
23 UMD-COLLEGE PARK           12.1%            19.6%
24 UMINN-TWIN CITIES           4.0%            15.6%
25 UNIV. OF UTAH               0.8%             9.1%
One Black writer wrote an interesting article where he pointed out this:

"On Saturday, Kansas coach Bill Self answered questions about junior Tyrone Appleton returning to Gary, Ind., for the funeral of a friend who was murdered. Appleton missed Saturday’s practice but will be back for today’s game against Dayton. Rick Telander, a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, asked Self if as a society we’ve come to expect young athletes to deal with the murder of friends and family members.

“It happens far too often,” Self said. “Of course once is way too much. Last year we had two individuals (Darnell Jackson and Rodrick Stewart) who had family members that were murdered in drive-bys the same week.”

Now, let’s take a moment to be bone honest. I don’t have to identify the race of Appleton, Jackson and Stewart. Whenever there is a story about athletes and murder, it’s relatively safe to assume they’re black. Peyton Manning’s boyz from the ’hood are unlikely to be gunned down."

Stuff Black People Don't Like includes their athlete-students graduating from college, for, when you look at the data, the main reason Black males are even in college is for the enjoyment of the white alumni. Were it not college football, Black males wouldn't be major colleges anywhere. As it is, Black males are still barely in colleges anywhere.

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#75. Lack of Black Head Coaches in College Football

Bear Bryant, whom many consider to be the finest football coach in history, will also be the man that Black people in the future "Black World" canonize as being the patron saint of making Southern football accommodating to Black people, and in large part, the nation.

It was 1972, and the University of Alabama's vaunted football program was struggling to win games with its all-white team, as other university's were employing Black people in great numbers on both sides of the ball. Having gone 12-11 in 1969 and 1970, Bryant decided what Alabama needed to lift themselves from barely above .500 was Black people:

"Before the start of the 1970 season, Bryant decided to take the initiative. At a January coaches meeting, he ran into his friend John McKay, the head coach of the University of Southern California Trojans, one of college football's most celebrated integrated teams. ... The Trojans would play in Birmingham to open the 1970 season, and Alabama would return the favor in Los Angeles the following autumn. Bryant must have known that his talent-deficient Tide team was no match for Southern Cal, and that proved to be the case. USC's two great black running backs, Sam "the Bam" Cunningham, who scored three touchdowns that afternoon, and Clarence Davis, who had been born in Birmingham, ran all over Alabama for a crushing 42-21 victory.

The one-sidedness of the defeat shocked many Alabamians... Cunningham, and proceeded to take him into the Alabama locker room, where he announced, "Gentlemen, this is what a football player looks like."

Bryant did go to the USC locker room to congratulate Cunningham, but the rest is fiction: The Alabama players didn't need to be told that the Tide had to integrate. Sam Cunningham, in Bear Bryant's words, "did more to integrate Alabama in one afternoon than Martin Luther King had in years."

Black people now comprise the majority of every Southeastern Conference (SEC) football team a mere 40 years later. Only lowly Vanderbilt dares trot out a majority white team, as the academic standards of the school leave Black people out of the admissions running in most cases, except for those who might be able to score a 22 on the Wonderlic Test.

Bear Bryant was so successful at integrating college football that now, 45.9 percent of Football Bowl Subdivision (DIA) athletes are Black people, even though Black people are only 14 percent of the population that is between the ages of 18-22 in the United States.

Almost all of the FBS schools that field majority Black football teams are comprised of nearly all-white student bodies. Black people don't mind this though, as the adulation of white people is one of their favorite things in life and with many future disingenuous white liberals being the bulk of those students bodies, its good practice for the future.

And yet, despite the multi-billion dollars that these athletes - many of them Black people - bring to their university's, there is a paucity of Black head coaches attempting to maintain order on campuses nationwide.

Right now, Black people are the head coaches of only seven of the 120 FBS college football programs:

DeWayne Walker, Ron English, Mike Locksley (New Mexico State, Eastern Michigan and New Mexico) join Turner Gill, Randy Shannon, Mike Haywood (Buffalo, Miami, Fl., Miami, Ohio) and Kevin Sumlin of Houston are the only Black head coaches in college football:

"In major-college football history, exactly two marquee jobs have gone to black coaches: Oklahoma hired John Blake in 1996, and Notre Dame hired Tyrone Willingham in 2002. Each was given three seasons before being booted."

Willingham, once the Token Black of head coaches, didn't fare well at Notre Dame and did even worse at Washington, taking that once powerful program into the lands only diversity could lead them, 0-12 in 2008 and a pathetic 11-37 in four seasons.

Mississippi State was the first SEC school to hire a Black head coach in Sylvester Croom, who was described as the Jackie Robinson of head coaching for breaking the color barrier in the deep south. His first season in 2004 saw him go 3-8 and he finished his career at MSU with a record of 21-38.

Why do we lump these men as failures together, when white coaches aren't held to the same monolithic standard? Because Black people that are coaches have the Black Coaches Association (renamed Black Coaches and Administrators), a place where Black people can lobby for more losing coaches to saddle the ranks of major college football with attempts at creating a racial balance quickly, as their mission is to:

• To address significant issues pertaining to the participation and employment of ethnic minorities in sport in general and intercollegiate athletics in particular.
• To assist ethnic minorities aspiring to have a career in athletics through educational and professional development programming and scholarships.
• To provide youth and diverse communities the opportunity to interact positively with the BCA as a corporate citizen and community builder through a variety of alliances

As SBPDL has shown, sports is only field where Black people surpass all other races - except incarceration rates - and show Black people in a positive light, given them access to complete entertainment domination and the adulation of white people everywhere.

Stuff Black People Don't Like will show in the coming week, as we prepare for the 2009 season, that Black people do not like their college athletes to graduate from college; they hate it when the lights to out on their careers; lack of Black mascots; Tim Tebow; White Running Backs; following team rules; and the media over-hyping Myron Rolle (because all Black people are capable of his intellectual acumen!).

However, for now Stuff Black People Don't Like includes the lack of Black Head Coaches in College Football's FBS division, for in the age of Mein Obama, only when a Black person is in control of all 120 FBS teams will the Black Coaches and Administrators organization be happy.

Black head coaches have failed at schools from Michigan State, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Washington, Mississippi State, UCLA, to Kansas State and a few others. White head coaches have failed at these schools as well, but they don't form groups to protect their interests. Perhaps that is why in the end, they will fail. To Black people, everything is about race. To white people, everything is about winning, regardless if white people lose in the end.

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