Federal Appeals Court Judge Terence T. Evans of Illinois was asked a few years ago to weigh in on a dispute between some students and teachers (on one side) at the University of Illinois and the University's chancellor (on the other). Judge Evans' day job as a federal appeals court judge appears to have been his second choice, and given different circumstances, he'd clearly rather have been a sports reporter.
Judge Evans began by explaining that the case concerned "'Chief Illiniwek,' who, depending on one's point of view, is either a mascot or a symbol of the university." Having gotten that far with something directly related to the case, he then announced: "[B]ut first, before getting to the issue at hand, we detour for a brief look at college nicknames and their embodiment as mascots."
Yep, let's go to the videotape.
Evans then launched into a lengthy discussion of how colleges drum up school spirit by giving themselves bizarre nicknames, usually applied to the school's sports teams. As he explained: "In the [area where Evans' court is located], some large schools -- Wisconsin (Badgers), Purdue (Boilermakers), Indiana (Hoosiers), Notre Dame (The Fighting Irish), DePaul (the Blue Demons), the University of Evansville (Purple Aces), and Southern Illinois (Salukis) -- have nicknames that would make any list of ones that are pretty cool. And small schools in this circuit are no slouches in the cool nickname department. One would have a hard time beating the Hustlin' Quakers of Earlham College (Richmond, Indiana), the Little Giants of Wabash College (Crawfordsville, Indiana), the Mastodons of Indiana University-Purdue University-Fort Wayne (Fort Wayne, Indiana), and the Scarlet Hawks of the Illinois Institute of Technology."
He also included these helpful facts: "Some schools adorn their nicknames with adjectives -- like 'Golden,' for instance. Thus, we see Golden Bears, Golden Bobcats, Golden Buffaloes, Golden Bulls, Golden Eagles (15 of them alone!), Golden Flashes, Golden Flyers, Golden Gophers, Golden Griffins, Golden Grizzlies, Golden Gusties, Golden Hurricanes, Golden Knights, Golden Lions, Golden Panthers, Golden Rams, Golden Seals, Golden Suns, Golden Tigers, and Golden Tornadoes cheering on their teams."
While some people no doubt deeply appreciated Judge Evans' detailed research, one has to wonder exactly what the point of all of this was (except, perhaps, that Evans thought he was on the "cool judges" list). He went on like this for two full pages out of a ten-page opinion, also making this thoughtful observation: "[W]e give the best college nickname nod to the University of California-Santa Cruz. Imagine the fear in the hearts of opponents who travel there to face the imaginatively named 'Banana Slugs'?" This then led him onto a new tangent involving the movie "Pulp Fiction."
Evans did eventually come around to the actual dispute, involving, as mentioned, the University of Illinois' mascot/symbol, Chief Illiniwek. Though dating from 1926, the Chief had become a point of controversy at the University, with many people finding him an offensive caricature of native peoples.
Some of the students and teachers felt so offended by Chief Illiniwek that they took it upon themselves to contact athletes being recruited by the school, warning them that they might end up playing for a school with a mascot some people found racist. The University's Chancellor responded by putting out a memorandum warning that the NCAA's rules limited the contacts school representatives could have with prospective athletes, and that doing so was strictly the job of the athletic staff.
Being red-blooded Americans, of course, these folks did what's natural: they sued, claiming that the chancellor's memorandum constituted a "prior restraint" on speech. They eventually won before the federal trial court, as well as before Evans' court.
Still, the vote was 2-1. The dissenting judge argued that the Chancellor's memorandum did nothing more than point out NCAA rules about contacts between student athletes and college recruiters. He also noted that the group that contacted prospective students were still free to undertake any other activity, whether leafletting, writing letters, or conducting protest marches -- on their own time.
He believed that this dispute, however, was an employer-employee matter, and that the University shouldn't have been restricted in telling its employees not to interfere in University business. But Evans and his one colleague disagreed, awarding each of the offended plaintiffs $1,000 each -- and probably about a hundred times that in attorney's fees, considering that the case went all the way to an appeal.
The main importance of the case, though, was undoubtedly that it gave Judge Evans a chance to show off his encyclopedic knowledge about college sports.
Just in case any ESPN executives were paying attention.
Frank Zotter, Jr. is a Ukiah attorney.
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