Flicks? Seventh Cav? North Dakota releases university nickname list
Whatever the University of North Dakota's athletic teams will be called moving forward, they won't be the Fighting Sioux. Shed a crocodile tear, Gopher fans, because that nickname is on the Not Approved List that was released by the school after a month of online and mail polling. For nostalgia's sake, several hundred of the hardy supporters suggested the former moniker, which is still one of the best in sports.
The school's list of names that will be considered is 214 single-spaced pages long and contains 1,172 unique suggestions, many of which were entered by different fans. More than 3,000 submissions, including many duplicates, rolled in during the first 24 hours.
What are some of the names on the approved list? Flickertails, NoDaks, even North Stars. If UND winds up being called the North Stars, by the way, yours truly -- as former TV voice of that honored club -- will leave the country and go live with Al Shaver in Canada.
Names on the approved list cover a panoply of North Dakota-related institutions and events. Yes, Seventh Cavalry was submitted several times. Seems a few folks are a little hazy as to what happened to Custer and the lads at the Little Big Horn. Lots of other good ideas came in: Aviators, Arctic Cats, Drillers. Fighting Farmers was submitted by an astonishing number of people. Frackers, Green Storm and Nordics, Pronghorns, Roughnecks, Snow Hawks and Sodbusters -- all are on the list.
A particular favorite of mine is Berserkers. In case you don't know, those are described as "Norse warriors, favorite soldiers of Odin, who fought in a nearly trance-like fury."
The list of approved names will go up for a public vote later this year.
But the university's teams won't be called the Fighting Sioux. Under a 2007 Consent Agreement, UND dropped the name in 2012 and vowed never again to use it. No Native American nicknames allowed.
Use of the name supposedly is the reason North Dakota hasn't played a men's hockey game against the Gophers since then, although that is about to change. A total of 5,778 of the nostalgic submitted the name anyway. All their votes went promptly to the No Way List. Since that 2007 agreement, the school's teams have had no nickname at all. In Golden Gopher hockey circles, NoDak is known simply as The Green Team, which, come to think about it, isn't so bad. Beats the frozen gophers out of Seventh Cavalry.
DOUG McLEOD's first college hockey broadcast was Minnesota at North Dakota. He is the play-by-play voice of Golden Gopher hockey on Fox Sports North and a longtime NHL voice, including the 1991 Stanley Cup Finals and the last six seasons of the North Stars.
