{"id":1207060,"date":"2020-07-16T18:35:58","date_gmt":"2020-07-16T22:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportscasting.com\/?p=1207060"},"modified":"2020-07-16T18:35:59","modified_gmt":"2020-07-16T22:35:59","slug":"if-you-think-redskins-is-bad-wait-until-you-hear-about-those-fightin-whites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sportscasting.com\/news\/if-you-think-redskins-is-bad-wait-until-you-hear-about-those-fightin-whites\/","title":{"rendered":"If You Think &#8216;Redskins&#8217; is Bad, Wait Until You Hear About Those &#8216;Fightin&#8217; Whites&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>It all started to prove a point. It ended with more than $125,000 in scholarship money. An intramural basketball team at the University of Northern Colorado in 2002 renamed its squad &#8216;The Fightin&#8217; Whites&#8217; (it was eventually changed to Fightin&#8217; Whities) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportscasting.com\/the-washington-redskins-wont-be-the-only-team-forced-to-change-its-name\/\">simply to make a statement<\/a>. When local activists failed to persuade a nearby high school to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportscasting.com\/the-harlem-globetrotters-offer-the-perfect-solution-to-redskins-name-change-dilemma\/\">change its mascot<\/a> and name &#8216;Fightin&#8217; Reds,&#8217; intramural basketball players at Northern Colorado decided to make a satirical protest of their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Washington Redskins name change coming<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Stephen A. reacts to Washington retiring the nickname &#039;Redskins&#039; and its logo | Get Up\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SJr5INXG3-Y?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>RELATED: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportscasting.com\/diehard-fans-with-washington-redskins-tattoos-find-themselves-in-a-dilemma\/\">Diehard Fans With Washington Redskins Tattoos Find Themselves in a Dilemma<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After 87 years of being called the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportscasting.com\/if-daniel-snyder-must-sell-the-redskins-mark-cuban-should-step-up\/\">Washington Redskins<\/a>, the team is making a nickname change. The change is about to happen because of public pressure and financial threats. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportscasting.com\/the-washington-redskins-face-a-potential-disaster-other-than-dan-snyder\/\">Team owner Daniel Snyder<\/a> had stated for years that the name of the team would never change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Money talks, however, as FedEx, which owns the stadium&#8217;s naming rights, threatened to pull out of the deal if the name wasn&#8217;t changed. Nike removed all Redskins gear from its site. Amazon was also to do the same thing with any Redskins products. Snyder agreed to make a change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Redskins name has been dropped, but as new name has yet to be announced. The apparent holdup is a trademark issue. According to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/sports.yahoo.com\/tons-of-redskins-nickname-options-have-been-trademarked-by-a-guy-in-virginia-154239747.html\">Yahoo! Sports<\/a>, a Virginia man named Philip Martin McCaulay has trademarked many of the potential names that would suit the Redskins. With the Washington team dragging its feet to find a new name, McCaulay apparently swooped in. He trademarked a number of names, forcing Washington to pay him for the rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Fightin&#8217; Whites name emerges in 2002<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Fighting whites\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6FCL9j0SB6s?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>When locals were trying to have the nickname Easton High School in Greeley, Colorado, changed, it stirred up some debate back in 2002. Easton was nicknamed the Fightin&#8217; Reds and there was a move to try and get the school to change. That&#8217;s when members of the University of Northern Colorado intramural basketball team decided to put a little spin on their own team&#8217;s nickname.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Solomon Little Owl, a team member who also directed the university&#8217;s Native American\u00a0Student Services, said his teammates, made up of a variety of races, wanted to &#8220;do something that will let people see the other side of what it&#8217;s like to be a mascot,&#8221; according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.seattlepi.com\/news\/article\/Fightin-Whities-mascot-raises-a-little-awarness-1083127.php\">seattlepi.com<\/a>. They <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportscasting.com\/the-chicago-blackhawks-make-it-clear-there-will-be-no-name-change\/\">changed their nickname<\/a> from Native Pride to The Fightin&#8217; Whites (it was reported a typo at some point changed the name to Whities). The change resulted in some intense media coverage. The <em>Greeley Tribute<\/em>&#8216;s web site crashed when the story collected more than 29,000 hits instead of its usual 200.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20071118211116\/http:\/\/www.tolerance.org\/news\/article_tol.jsp?id=684\">tolerance.org<\/a>, the team was inundated with requests for t-shirts, hats, and other items after the name change. &#8220;We never really thought anything would become of it,&#8221; said Jeff Van Irwarden, then a senior on the basketball team and manager of the T-shirt campaign. &#8220;We just wanted to send a message to Eaton by doing the same thing they had done. But it really went beyond anything we could have ever expected.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Fightin&#8217; Whites raise $125K in scholarships for Native Americans<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"The Fighting Whities - American Morning with Paula Zahn, March 13 2002\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/B_mzZRX-JVQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Internet sales went through the roof on The Fightin&#8217; Whities merchandise which bore the logo of a smiling white man. More than $125,000 was raised which was to be used as scholarships for Native American students at Northern Colorado. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;We were just trying to send a message at first,&#8221; Van Irwarden said, according to tolerance.org. &#8220;But when the media calls starting coming and we saw that people wanted to get shirts and were willing to pay money for them, we decided to put together the T-shirt campaign and the scholarship foundation.&#8221; The team even added the phrase &#8220;Fighting the use of Native American stereotypes&#8221; to its merchandise in order to discourage the use of the shirts by white supremacists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Fightin&#8217; Whities drew attention across the country and drew praise from some activists fighting against racial mascots. &#8220;They are really doing a good job of making a point,&#8221; said Jen Tayabji, a former student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. &#8220;They\u2019re getting a lot of attention and getting people who might not have been interested in the issue to start thinking about it.&#8221; Tayabji was a member of the university&#8217;s\u00a0Progressive Resource Action Cooperative,\u00a0which was spearheading its own movement against UIUC&#8217;s mascot, Chief Illiniwek.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you think the Redskins nickname is bad, wait until you hear about the intramural basketball team that was called the Fightin&#8217; Whities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":1207137,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[447257],"class_list":["post-1207060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl","tag-washington-commanders"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v23.5 (Yoast SEO v23.5) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>If You Think &#039;Redskins&#039; 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