The mascot debate

Gary jungenberg said:

Kingfisher all the way. The students have spoken.

Many on this page are old- and we need fresh ideas to drive the fans of the future.

We are already fans... our opinion is not as important on this topic.

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Unofficial vote totals show 9,161 in favor of keeping the Chief to 4,027 against, or 69.5 percent to 30.5 percent.

In response to the question, "Do you support Chief Illiniwek as the official symbol of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign," 9,003 students marked 'yes' and 2,517 students voted no, according to the commission.

I honestly thought Washington Football Team was a spectacular name. No sarcasm. It acknowledged that the team’s former nickname was an anachronism born from a distant past and vastly different cultural sensibilities, but the franchise could both retain and even restore their legacy by being just Washington, the professional football team who wears burgundy and yellow and plays in Washingon DC (actually Maryland, but whatever). Is Commanders better than that? What is a “commander”? Who cares?

I have no issue whatsoever rooting for the Illinois Football Team, Illinois Basketball Team, Illinois Golf Team, or Illinois (Insert Other) for the rest of time if it comes to that. Our logo is an orange letter I and we play collegiate sports. Done.

AutoPoster 3000 said:

I honestly thought Washington Football Team was a spectacular name. No sarcasm. It acknowledged that the team’s former nickname was an anachronism born from a distant past and vastly different cultural sensibilities, but the franchise could both retain and even restore their legacy by being just Washington, the professional football team who wears burgundy and yellow and plays in Washingon DC (actually Maryland, but whatever). Is Commanders better than that? What is a “commander”? Who cares?

I have no issue whatsoever rooting for the Illinois Football Team, Illinois Basketball Team, Illinois Golf Team, or Illinois (Insert Other) for the rest of time if it comes to that. Our logo is an orange letter I and we play collegiate sports. Done.

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Disagree - we should still be the Fighting Illini. I would prefer if we still had the Chief as our symbol, but if for whatever reason that won't fly there is no need for a kingfisher, otter, or other critter to be our mascot.

AutoPoster 3000 said:

I honestly thought Washington Football Team was a spectacular name. No sarcasm. It acknowledged that the team’s former nickname was an anachronism born from a distant past and vastly different cultural sensibilities, but the franchise could both retain and even restore their legacy by being just Washington, the professional football team who wears burgundy and yellow and plays in Washingon DC (actually Maryland, but whatever). Is Commanders better than that? What is a “commander”? Who cares?

I have no issue whatsoever rooting for the Illinois Football Team, Illinois Basketball Team, Illinois Golf Team, or Illinois (Insert Other) for the rest of time if it comes to that. Our logo is an orange letter I and we play collegiate sports. Done.

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I like rooting for the University of Illinois Fighting Illini.

bluemountain said:

Disagree - we should still be the Fighting Illini. I would prefer if we still had the Chief as our symbol, but if for whatever reason that won't fly there is no need for a kingfisher, otter, or other critter to be our mascot.

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That’s fine if you believe the Fighting Illini nickname will buck the trend that has gone in one direction consistently for the past 50+ years.

bluemountain said:

Disagree - we should still be the Fighting Illini. I would prefer if we still had the Chief as our symbol, but if for whatever reason that won't fly there is no need for a kingfisher, otter, or other critter to be our mascot.

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I think its bs that the University wouldn't stand up to the NCAA and the other factors who protested the use of the chief. I know that the young men who dawned the Chief head dress and danced for the University did plenty of educational work in the communities. There was nothing derogatory ever presented by the symbol only good but the powers to be took the easy way out and gave in..

I say if we can not have the chief back then we should either keep the Fighting Illinois name and salute the military or stay the course we are at now. We don't need no stinking bird, weasel or rodent.

Ghost77 said:

I will only support a WWI style soldier or my own personal creation, Blocky the I. Where you graphic designers at? Need your help to spruce up my vision! Keep the Fighting Illini name and have this guy roaming the court/sidelines and getting into crazy hijinks with opposing team/fans.

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I’m not sure why we aren’t talking more about Blocky the I.

I’m sold. Exactly as is…no sprucing up!

I’m all about the chief. The chief being gone and the last 15years of football and basketball being in the dumps was a constant reminder that as an sports fan of teams that are actually in illinois we just dont get to have nice things… that being said the legends that have come through the UofI are deep. If we HAVE to have a mascot, play off the most legendary athlete we have ever had Red Grange. We stay the fighting Illini, but the mascot is the Galloping Ghost... whatever that may look like. In honor of the legends who have played and the a Chief who will always run and dance through the veins of everyone who bleeds the O&B.

LocalChief505 said:

I’m all about the chief. The chief being gone and the last 15years of football and basketball being in the dumps was a constant reminder that as an sports fan of teams that are actually in illinois we just dont get to have nice things… that being said the legends that have come through the UofI are deep. If we HAVE to have a mascot, play off the most legendary athlete we have ever had Red Grange. We stay the fighting Illini, but the mascot is the Galloping Ghost... whatever that may look like. In honor of the legends who have played and the a Chief who will always run and dance through the veins of everyone who bleeds the O&B.

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The University of Illinois Galloping Ghosts! Homecoming always scheduled for Halloween weekend. Mascot is a person in an orange suit, dark blue cape, but headless (like legend of sleepy hollow). Rides in on a black stallion, with lots of fog, and the band plays the creepy music from Halloween the movie. We confuse everyone by "booing" good plays, but we do it by saying "boooooooooo" like a ghost would say. Free candy if you dress up in an orange and blue costume.

Galloping Ghosts it is!

G . H . O ...

Dee_4_Three_83 said:

To me, the only option that really makes sense is to change the team name from The Fighting Illini to...The Fighting Illini. Don't change the name, just the focus. Our football team plays in Memorial Stadium for a reason. A WWI soldier would be an appropriate honoring of those that serve, and best of all, we wouldn't have to change the name as this is also a song reference to those that fought in WWI from Illinois.

Reference

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I don't even think we need any type of mascot or symbol or whatever to lean into our historic ties with WWI and Illinois' veterans WAY more. It should be a focal point of a trip to Memorial Stadium, not a piece of random side trivia about the columns. Speaking of which...

... I had an "Oh shlt!" moment the other day where I realized that my historic aversion to a "Column I" as one of our logos is almost entirely from associating it with the academically oriented one below:



However, if you get a little creative and hire the right minds, you could actually do some really cool things with these two basic shapes and make it look a lot more unique and imposing.



Now I am NOT the person to do this, and this is of course just clip art from a Google search next to our current logo, lol ... but it's actually pretty easy to imagine morphing those two together and only having slight visual influences from the column imagery to make a cool secondary logo for us. The kind of thing that would be on the side corner of our basketball shorts, not the main logo of the sports team. I am pretty much imagining the standard Block I on the right but looking like it has the faint texture of a column? I don't know, but there are ideas to be had! The academic logo above is great, just not for sports.

Either way, I think most here would agree that we seem to have fewer traditions than a lot of our Big Ten peers at this point ... not our faults, but it is what it is! I'm sure there is someone out there who could get offended by this, but it seems like a no-brainer to me to lean into the World War I angle a LOT more. We don't have to come up with some caricature that would take pictures with kids, we can keep it classier and more respectful to fallen Illinoisans and do some more serious stuff. This could start with something as small as the PA announcer at every home game saying something like this:

"Ladies and gentleman from Illinois and all around, welcome to Memorial Stadium. Since 1923, this stadium has stood as a proud monument to the men and women of Illinois who made the ultimate sacrifice in service of our nation. We welcome Illini fans and all of our visitors today to face the South End Zone and ____________" Then do something that is patriotic, respectful, meaningful ... but also exciting (i.e., not just a moment of silence). Again, I will leave it up to the creative types to fill in the blanks, but there are a lot of cool traditions we could start by leaning into SUCH a cool and meaningful aspect of the history of the Illini. It would be something kind of like "The Wave" at Kinnick Stadium, when fans wave to the pediatric cancer patients at the children's hospital - something that absolutely everybody, home or visitor, can get behind and feel really good participating in!

Point-Illinois said:

I’m not sure why we aren’t talking more about Blocky the I.

I’m sold. Exactly as is…no sprucing up!

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I, too, am a fan of Blocky. No joke.

7 Year Illini said:

The University of Illinois Galloping Ghosts! Homecoming always scheduled for Halloween weekend. Mascot is a person in an orange suit, dark blue cape, but headless (like legend of sleepy hollow). Rides in on a black stallion, with lots of fog, and the band plays the creepy music from Halloween the movie. We confuse everyone by "booing" good plays, but we do it by saying "boooooooooo" like a ghost would say. Free candy if you dress up in an orange and blue costume.

Galloping Ghosts it is!

G . H . O ...

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Or, we could be the Grangers (it's an actual word meaning farmer) with a gray ghost as a mascot.

Fighting Illini will always be the best, though.

Knock on wood and all, but even the most extreme weirdos haven’t made Fighting Illini a priority of attack … look how we folded on something as tertiary as the War Chant, if Fighting Illini were in any danger in the foreseeable future, it’d be gone already.

At this point, with absolutely ZERO reference to American Indians, it’s indistinguishable from Hawkeye, Buckeye or Hoosier.

People need to get over the chief stuff. It's not coming back anytime soon and likely never will.

IlliniFaninHoosierLand said:

People need to get over the chief stuff. It's not coming back anytime soon and likely never will.

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Can I like this post a million times? The chief is never coming back.

And since it was eliminated, roughly 8,000 freshmen a year have entered into the university, over 120,000 kids who have never seen the chief and wonder why the hell old people care so much about it. In another 15 years, only old people will even know what they are talking about.

I do think NEW traditions are needed, however.

Ghost77 said:

I will only support a WWI style soldier or my own personal creation, Blocky the I. Where you graphic designers at? Need your help to spruce up my vision! Keep the Fighting Illini name and have this guy roaming the court/sidelines and getting into crazy hijinks with opposing team/fans.

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I like the mix of the monopoly man and mr peanut. I can support this. Needs to be out of the box or nothing at all

I like the doughboy idea…keep the Fighting Illini name and if you need a mascot use one of these.

IlliniBrave75 said:

I like the doughboy idea…keep the Fighting Illini name and if you need a mascot use one of these.
View attachment 22022View attachment 22023

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I'm good with no mascot at all. Having said that, this is by far the best alternative.

Fighting Tully Monsters

IlliniBrave75 said:

I like the doughboy idea…keep the Fighting Illini name and if you need a mascot use one of these.
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I vote for the one on the right. The other one just looks like the chief in a doughboy costume. New traditions are definitely in order. I can picture an honoring of an active or retired military service person, a song sung or created in honor of fighting illini military members at halftime, and even supporting a charitable organization for wounded warriors in Illinois (maybe a 50/50 raffle or something).

7 Year Illini said:

Can I like this post a million times? The chief is never coming back.

And since it was eliminated, roughly 8,000 freshmen a year have entered into the university, over 120,000 kids who have never seen the chief and wonder why the hell old people care so much about it. In another 15 years, only old people will even know what they are talking about.

I do think NEW traditions are needed, however.

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I've often thought about the Chief disappearing from memory as we oldtimers fade away. It could happen. But I seriously doubt that any of the 120,000 kids who have passed through the halls don't have a good understanding of the Chief. The most recent of the two articles linked above was from 2019, after all. And, though he may pass from memory for others, I will continue to proudly wear one of my 30+ t-shirts or 10+ sweatshirts honoring the Chief. So I'm a fossil and proud of it!

Course, if we were to have a new "mascot" (not that we ever had one), I like the idea offered several years ago about using a fireman, who would be a fire "chief" who, in place of the Chief's dance, would appear at halftime and do a choreographed stop, drop and roll to the cheers of the stadium.

Ill in Cols said:

Course, if we were to have a new "mascot" (not that we ever had one), I like the idea offered several years ago about using a fireman, who would be a fire "chief" who, in place of the Chief's dance, would appear at halftime and do a choreographed stop, drop and roll to the cheers of the stadium.

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Then we could finally incorporate a ladder as part of the official symbolism.

I've heard that some ultra wokesters even want to ban the word "chief", mistakenly believing that it has some native American roots.

BRucks said:

Student vote favors keeping Chief Illiniwek

University of Illinois students voted by more than a 2-1 margin to keep Chief Illiniwek as the symbol of the university after a two-day online referendum. Unofficial vote totals show

www.news-gazette.com

Unofficial vote totals show 9,161 in favor of keeping the Chief to 4,027 against, or 69.5 percent to 30.5 percent.

UI student vote favors Chief Illiniwek

CHAMPAIGN — By a nearly 4-to-1 margin, University of Illinois students supported Chief Illiniwek in a recent referendum.The release of the results was prompted by a student judicial group that

www.news-gazette.com

In response to the question, "Do you support Chief Illiniwek as the official symbol of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign," 9,003 students marked 'yes' and 2,517 students voted no, according to the commission.

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The majority is not always right. The first article was from 2004 and the second from 2013 (updated, though not mentioned in what way in 2019). Anything newer? Do most students on campus now even remember the chief? Not too long ago most people did not approve of same sex marriage. Things change.

MustangWally said:

I've heard that some ultra wokesters even want to ban the word "chief", mistakenly believing that it has some native American roots.

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Looked this up. Only one instance that I could find where they actually did remove the word "chief". The San Fransisco school board did it but as the San Fransisco Chronicle pointed out, "the decision came after concerns were raised by Native American community members." So there was a legitimate reason. However, I don't agree with the school board as the word "chief" is probably from the French word "chef" so yes they went overboard. However I am pointing out the extreme rarity of anyone or any organization banning the word "chief". The overwhelming majority of individuals and organizations across the country are not and probably haven't even considered it. Just because one went ahead and got rid of the term doesn't mean it is some kind of widespread conspiracy or movement.