The same month Saigo made his appeal, the NCAA Executive Committee — the Association’s highest-ranking body — issued a new policy banning schools in states that fly the Confederate flag from hosting championship events.

When it was announced, potential critics lined up with commendations. “Two thumbs-up to the NCAA,” USA Today sports columnist Jon Saraceno wrote.

Meanwhile, the level of unease with Native American mascots was reaching new heights. In 2001 alone, colleges and universities swapped Apaches for Jaguars, traded Indians for Patriots and dropped “Red” from “Red Raiders.” The most influential voice, however, came from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which called for an end to the use of Native Americans as school mascots, logos and nicknames, describing it in a statement as an “insensitive” practice that “should be avoided.”

Southwestern College switches its name from Apaches to Jaguars.

The Quinnipiac University board of trustees votes to drop the school’s Braves nickname.

Cumberland College will no longer be the Indians, but the Patriots.

Colgate University stops using “Red” as part of its Red Raiders nickname.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issues a statement that calls for schools to stop using Native American images and nicknames for its teams, calling the practice “insensitive.”

The New York State Education Department calls for retiring “Indian” team names from public schools.

The Minnesota Indian Education Association adopts a resolution against the University of North Dakota’s use of “Fighting Sioux.”

The Modern Language Association adopts a resolution in opposition to Native American mascots and symbols.

An American Counseling Association resolution encourages members to work toward elimination of stereotypical Native American images at their workplaces.

A resolution passed by the Seminole of Oklahoma, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Muskogee nations calls for eliminating “the stereotypical use of American Indian names and images as mascots in sports.”

The National Conference for Community and Justice opposes Native American mascots in a statement.

The Maryland Commission on Indian Affairs issues a resolution supporting the elimination of Native American mascots, logos and sports team nicknames in the state’s public schools.

2002

Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts gets rid of the nickname Mohawks.

Southeastern Community College moves from the Blackhawks nickname to Black Hawks.

Martin Methodist College drops Indians for Redhawks.

The Iowa Civil Rights Commission opposes use of Native American team names and images in a resolution.

In Minnesota, 34 presidents on the State Colleges and Universities Board oppose discriminatory team names, logos and mascots in a resolution.

The New Hampshire Board of Education calls for local schools to stop using Native American mascots.

The North Carolina State Advisory Council on Indian Education opposes Native American mascots, logos and the like in public schools in the state.

Days after that statement was released, the Executive Committee assigned the NCAA Minority Opportunities and Interests Committee to examine the issue. The committee worked quickly: Within two months, it concluded Native American mascots “must be a concern to the NCAA,” according to a July 2001 committee report.

But NCAA work on the issue had only begun. Vowels, then chair of the Minority Opportunities and Interests Committee, began meeting with university presidents, chancellors and athletics directors at schools with Native American mascots. “We felt good about those hard discussions,” he says. “You have the history — there’s a love of the school and how it’s been for so many years. You have to work through those issues and get to the point of consensus, but there was also a feeling that we need to move on.”

Vowels’ committee spent a year talking with affected schools and developing options for consideration. In its final report to the Executive Committee, the Minority Opportunities and Interests Committee noted: “A change in tradition is not an indication that institutions were ‘wrong’ in the past or that institutions harbor ill will toward American Indians. It is simply an acknowledgment of changing times and growing awareness and sensitivity.”

The Executive Committee wasn’t prepared to make a decision. It asked the top committees from each of the three NCAA divisions to consider the recommendations. It referred the issue to a subcommittee. By 2004, the Executive Committee had invited member schools with Native American nicknames to complete a self-study. The hope: that schools would recognize the nation’s tolerance for using particular ethnic groups as mascots was waning, and take steps to make changes.

But early responses showed this was one issue that wouldn’t resolve itself. One Executive Committee report noted that in the first few months of the self-study, only 12 schools had responded. Nine did support some type of NCAA-directed analysis, and the feedback suggested university leaders wanted to initiate change but didn’t think their campus had an appetite for it unless it was forced. Two schools, on the other hand, were strongly opposed. The report said those two considered NCAA involvement “an unreasonable interference … in institutional issues.”

By late 2004, the Minority Opportunities and Interests Committee was growing frustrated. Increasingly, members were unconvinced the Association’s top committee would be willing to take a stand on Native American mascots. “We were concerned because we thought we had vetted it in a way that was thorough and was equal on everybody’s side,” Vowels says. “So when things did bog down a little bit, we were wondering whether folks were going to get cold feet. We said, ‘Hey, time is moving. We’ve looked at this issue. We think it’s the right thing to do.’”

While Vowels and his committee were waiting for action, other groups were taking it. State boards of education in Michigan and New Hampshire called for an end to Native Americans as mascots at public schools in their states. More colleges and universities, including Southeast Missouri State University, which switched from the Indians to the Redhawks, changed their nicknames. The issue, while drawing little attention in the public consciousness, was moving on with or without the NCAA.

Finally, in summer 2005, with the schools’ self-studies complete, all that was left was for the NCAA’s highest-ranking committee to make a decision.

At that point Walt Harrison, president of the University of Hartford, had been serving on the Executive Committee for two years. The Aug. 4, 2005, meeting was his first as chair, but the issue the college presidents on the committee were asked to consider that day was not new to Harrison.

Years earlier in the mid-1990s, when he was vice president for university relations at the University of Michigan, Native American students on campus had protested a secret society on campus known as Michigamua, based on a fictional tribe. As Harrison was working with the students and dissecting the complexities of issues surrounding ethnic identity, he was awakened to the sensitivity of the issue. “I’m Jewish, and I was asked to think about, ‘What if they were the Michigan Rabbis, and they had a big Rabbi symbol on their hats?’ That made a huge impression on me,” Harrison recalls. “So when it came up in the context of the Executive Committee, to me, it seemed kind of obvious that we needed to take action.”

The committee voted 17–0 to prohibit member schools from displaying “hostile and abusive racial/ethnic/national origin mascots, nicknames or imagery” at NCAA championships. A series of deadlines were put in place for the changes, but players, cheerleaders and band members’ uniforms could not display Native American imagery, and such images had to be covered if the school was hosting an NCAA championship event. Eighteen schools were cited in the announcement for their use of questionable nicknames, mascots and imagery.

Bernard Franklin, then the NCAA senior vice president for governance and membership, had worked at the national office just a few months at that time; previously, he had been a college president who served on the Executive Committee in 2001, when it adopted the ban on schools in states that fly the Confederate flag hosting championships. To him, the Native American mascot announcement felt similar.

“It was the same process — decision on Thursday, announcement on Friday,” Franklin says. “On the Confederate flag issue, on Saturday, there was hardly a whisper. I think in the back of the minds of folks, they thought, well, that was a controversial policy. And so I think we underestimated the reaction to this policy across the country.”

The reaction was pointed — and angry. Some schools said they were blindsided by the decision. Others questioned how those three words — “hostile and abusive” — could apply to traditions they believed were carried out with decorum and respect.

“Is this the PC police here,” columnist Peter Kerasotis wrote in the News-Press of Fort Myers, Florida, “or the KGB?”

Jeb Bush, then the governor of Florida — whose Statehouse office was located in the same city as the Florida State University Seminoles — told reporters: “How politically correct can we get? To me, the folks that make these decisions need to get out more often.”

“Note to the NCAA Executive Committee,” wrote columnist David Climer of The Tennesseean, “Once you open a can of worms, it’s hard to get that sucker closed.”

Even more visceral comments came from fans via voice mail and email. Shortly after the announcement, a series of voice mails arrived at 2 or 3 a.m. at Harrison’s office at the University of Hartford. Harrison asked his assistant to listen, just in case someone had left contact information and wanted a returned call. But all she heard, over a combined half-hour of messages, was vocal intonations of the “tomahawk chop,” a chant used by Florida State.

“Aaah-ah-ah-uh-ah … aaah-ah-ah-uh-ah.”

Originally published at www.ncaa.org.