Look, more trees!

From the 'can't see the forest for the trees' file comes the latest stupidity from the University of Illinois.

The UI is appealing for the second time the ruling by the NCAA that Cheef Illiwek is a 'hostile and abusive' and racist mascot.

Talk about self-abusive. Talk about lost causes. The UI still can't figure out that the NCAA is NOT a democracy. Never claimed to be one. Never pretended to be one. You play by the NCAA rules or you go off in a corner and play by (with?) yourself.

The UI also can't figure out that any mascot so hated by so many people for so many good reasons is a divisive figure that's hurting the UI and it's reputation across the country.

Folks, people outside of Illinois are laughing at the UI. And feeling sorry for the folks who work and teach there. The UI is actually losing good quality faculty because of the presence of the Cheef. And failing to attract other quality faculty members because of the Cheef. What exactly is the purpose of a major university? Education or a dancing minstrel show?

But the UI persists in its lost cause because a few rich alumni want to hang on to a false but romanticized image from the past.

The latest appeal concerns the name Chief Illiniwek, the Chief logo and the Chief Illiniwek performance.
"It is about a policy that asks a member institution to decide between abandoning an 80-year-old tradition cherished by many or face diminished participation in NCAA championship events by its student-athletes," the appeal states.
The appeal is in the form of a 15-page letter signed by UI Board of Trustees Chairman Larry Eppley. It reiterates the arguments made in the first appeal that the NCAA committee exceeded its authority and ignored contradictory evidence, but it does so in greater detail. The UI also argues that the NCAA is the wrong organization to rule on Chief Illiniwek, and the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights has jurisdiction over whether the Chief's presence violates any laws.

Just what rock is that man living under? How stupid can he and the rest of the trustees be?

How stupid can the Cheef supporters be? Do they really want to hang on to something so hostile, abusive and so reprehensible while hurting the UI's reputation and putting UI's smaller sports at a competitive disadvantage? All the while insisting that the opposition to the Cheef is made up of a 'small fraction of people who are easily offended.' They've restated that unbelievably sad, misguided mantra so often it's possible they've finally come to believe it.

Apparently there is no way to measure the depths of the ignorance on the BOT. Wave a few more alumni dollars around and Eppley will happily rush right back into that burning building to try to save something that's already lost. Burned up years ago.

How stupid. How pathetic.

How predictable.

And so it goes.