The dumbass athletic director at the University of Tennessee, Dave Hart, has decided that the University's women's athletic teams no longer will be called the "Lady Vols" ("Vols" is short for "Volunteers," the university moniker). Instead, "Lady Vols" and their unique logo will be replaced by the orange and white "Power T."
Now, before any of you Kossacks get all outraged at the term "Lady Vols," you need to understand the name was chosen years ago by the women themselves. For the full story, go to today's Washington Post website and read Sally Jenkins' article in the sports section -- it's an excellent short history of women's collegiate sports in general and the UT situation specifically.
More below the squiggle.
Quotes from the Jenkins piece:
First of all, the idea that “Lady” is an anachronism or even a slur is too thoughtless to let stand. It’s a term of civility and respect, the natural counterpart to gentleman; it connotes someone who commands courtesy and extends it in return. Among other uses, it describes the partner of the leader of the country, the First Lady. In the case of the Tennessee Lady Vols, it’s a self-selected term that represents a history of hard-won greatness, the seizure of athletic power and identity for women via Title IX, led by Summitt and an all-female athletic department in the 1970s. (NOTE: "Summit" is long-time UT women's basketball coach Pat Head Summitt, herself a legend -- Google "Pat Summit" for the details.)
They chose the name for themselves in a meeting in a basement in 1976. Up to that point, Tennessee had seven women’s sports housed in a small, stifling, fifth-floor walk-up attic office. Summitt did the scheduling, travel plans, ordering and rules compliance for all of them, along with teaching four courses — on an annual salary of $8,900. Gerald Ford had just signed Title IX into law, but most schools were thinking about how to duck it. To give you an idea of the tenor of the times, when the University of Texas shelled out $17,000 to hire a basketball coach named Jody Conradt, it shocked a local paper into the headline, “Woman Hired At Man’s Salary.”
At Tennessee, Summitt and a handful of women persuaded then-president Ed Boling to make a genuine commitment to the law, creating a women’s athletic department that was allowed to move into the basement of Stokely Athletics Center. Which was where they convened a meeting to decide on their team logos.
Until then, women’s teams at Tennessee had been the Volettes, but Summitt hated it. It reminded her of a line of chorus girls. She hated anything, in fact, that made her athletes sound girly-girl. “Babies, sissies,” she would sneer. “Nice girls.” She thought they needed a new brand and a break from the dingy, underfunded, sexist past..
Jenkins goes on to describe how Pat Summit became a legend in collegiate sports -- and the winningest NCAA basketball coach of all time, men and women.
I suspect there are Vol fans among the Kossacks -- get on the phone, get on the email -- if you're near Knoxville, get out the pitchforks and torches and march -- THIS OUTRAGE CANNOT STAND!!!!