From The Anniston Star
Animal-rights group moves to stop JSU from using
'Gamecocks' nickname
By Ben Cunningham
Star Staff Writer
08-13-2005
What do chickens and Chippewas have in common?
Both have groups of people that want them kept out of
college football stadiums and basketball arenas – more
specifically, off the players’ jerseys and the school
walls.
For the second time in four years, the animal-rights
group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has
asked the National Collegiate Athletic Association to
stop Jacksonville State University and the University
of South Carolina from using the nickname “Gamecocks”
because it supposedly promotes the sport of
cockfighting.
The request, in the form of a letter mailed Wednesday
to NCAA President Myles Brand, came hot on the heels
of the NCAA’s decision last week to ban college teams
from using “hostile or abusive” nicknames for their
sports teams in postseason play. That ban was aimed
squarely at schools whose teams use names based on
American Indians, such as Central Michigan
University’s Chippewas. The move has put many fans on
the warpath.
Now PETA has stepped into the ring.
PETA campaign manager Dan Shannon said the decision on
Indians spurred his organization to charge for the
chicken change now.
“The fact is that cockfighting is illegal in 48 states
and is hideously cruel,” Shannon said.
The sport, in which two specially bred roosters square
off in a fight to the death, is illegal in both
Alabama and South Carolina. Here, cockfighting or
operating a “cock pit” is a misdemeanor punishable by
a fine of $20-$50.
Aside from being illegal, the sport is cruel, Shannon
said, because it almost always ends with the death of
at least one of the animals.
The Gamecocks are having none of it. JSU president
Bill Meehan said Friday the school doesn’t support
cockfighting, but he has no plans to change the
school’s nickname and doesn’t want to get into a
debate with PETA over the matter.
“It’s a non-issue,” Meehan said. “I wouldn’t want to
see us change.”
E.C. “Baldy’ Wilson doesn’t want to see it change
either. He was a member of the Jacksonville State
Teacher’s College football squad in 1946, and a
veteran just back from the war in Europe.
That was the year players voted to change the name to
“Gamecocks” from “Eagle Owls” – a predatory bird found
in Scandinavia and northern Asia.
“We’d go places and … people would say, ‘What is an
eagle owl?’” said Wilson, now 82 and still a supporter
of the football program.
In picking a replacement, the players went with
something more familiar.
“Back in the old days everybody had a yard full of
chickens,” Wilson said. Nobody connected with the team
actually fought birds at cockfights, as he remembers
it, but the young men admired roosters.
“They’re pretty and they’re proud,” Wilson said. “They
have a lot of pride and they’ll fight to defend their
turf.”
Shannon says that PETA has no problem with teams
naming themselves after other animals, such as tigers
or bears. Those names honor the nobility and majesty
of the animals he said.
“Gamecocks is the only nickname that promotes
cruelty,” Shannon said. For JSU to call its teams the
“Gamecocks” is tantamount to calling them the
“Wifebeaters” or the “Looters,” or other illegal
activities, according to the PETA letter.
In 2001, PETA asked both JSU and USC directly to
change the names, and received “polite responses” from
both schools declining to do so.
Shannon said the organization still is waiting for a
response from the NCAA on its latest request.
In the meantime, JSU appears prepared to defend its
turf. After all, the school this summer installed new
artificial turf at its football stadium, emblazoned
with a picture of a fighting rooster at midfield and
the word “Gamecocks” in huge letters in each end zone.
Meehan called PETA a “good” organization” that has
chosen the “wrong focus” with the mascot issue.
He expects that when classes begin Aug. 31 and the
football team kicks off Sept. 1, most students on
campus will rally behind the Gamecocks, much as they
did in 2001.
“If they did anything they did help solidify our
identity then,” Meehan said.
THE STATE OF ALABAMA IS CRIMSON!!!! ~ Paul Kennedy
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