George Kimball America at LargeWhen last we visited this issue three years ago it was to reflect our amusement at the adoption, by a predominantly Native American basketball team at the University of Northern Colorado, of the nickname "Fighting Whities". The Fighting Whities made their point, and made it well, and the most admirable aspect of their crusade may have been their tongue-in-cheek approach to the matter.

There is nothing tongue-in-cheek about the NCAA's latest mission. Indeed, it might better be described as "head-up-ass". The executive committee of the National Collegiate Athletic Association revealed this week that they will conduct a study designed to formally ban Native American mascots and nicknames.

This latest campaign for political rectitude had its genesis in the establishment, in 2002, of an NCAA minority interests and opportunities committee, formed in response to protests over the use by South Carolina and Mississippi of the Confederate flag in their State ensigns. The success of that well-intentioned enterprise is debatable. South Carolina and Mississippi have defiantly retained the Confederate symbolism, and the NCAA have defiantly banned those States from hosting association championships.

That issue having resulted in a stalemate, the minority interests committee apparently needed another issue to justify their existence, and the subject of Indian nicknames was available.

This periodically becomes a hot-button topic, particularly when the Indians themselves raise the issue - which they did not, this time anyway.

Collegiate sport's governing body will convene next month for a series of meetings to determine the fate of 30 member institutions they have put on notice to review their school nicknames, which range from Braves and Redmen to Utes (University of Utah) and Savages (Southeastern Oklahoma).

Another school which may have to change their nickname: The Indians, who represent Indiana University of Pennsylvania (stet).

At least one member institution, Florida State, appear prepared to go on the warpath to defend their nickname, the Seminoles. Upon receiving a directive ordering the college to review the name, university vice-president Lee Hinkle fired back an angry letter in which he claimed "there is absolutely no evidence that our use of the Seminole symbol and images is in any way racist, that it creates a hostile environment for any person, that it contributes to misinformation contrary to our university's educational mission, that it is damaging to young people of any race, that it is sacrilegious or that it is contrary to the diversity and antidiscrimination policies of our university and the NCAA." Hinkle added that the use of the Seminole name came "with the full knowledge" of tribal leaders, both in Florida and in Oklahoma, where the tribe was unceremoniously relocated by the US government in the 19th century.

For reasons best known unto themselves, the NCAA also included "Warriors" on its soon-to-be-banned list, which has raised hackles at at least a couple of schools: Marquette, which used to be the Warriors, and the University of Hawaii-Manoa.

The Marquette situation is interesting because it recently produced a parallel controversy which coincided with the NCAA's revelation of its plans. Although warriors should hardly be generically offensive to anybody, Marquette's was historically linked to a caricature mascot named Willie Wampum, which led the Milwaukee school's president, the Rev Albert J DiUlio, to retire it in 1994 and offer the student body a choice between Golden Eagles and Lighting. Golden Eagles won, but everybody hated it, and last week the school announced they would henceforth be known simply as The Gold, resulting in campus protests the likes of which had not been seen since the Vietnam War.

Over the past quarter-century many colleges beat the NCAA to the punch by eradicating potentially offensive nicknames of their own volition. The University of Massachusetts teams, which were the Redmen when my father played football and baseball there, were transformed into the Minutemen.

Other schools replaced Native American names and adopted simple hues: Stanford changed from Indians to Cardinal and Dartmouth from Indians to Big Green, both without a whimper of protest from organisations representing colour-blind people.

The administration at the University of Hawaii-Manoa was somewhat befuddled to receive the NCAA communique ordering the institution to review their nickname, which obviously derives from an entirely different, and non-Indian, tradition. A spokesman at the university said if there had been any complaints about the Warrior nickname from native Hawaiian Polynesian groups, he was unaware of them.

Left unmolested by the NCAA probe, in the meantime, will be some of the more imaginative collegiate nicknames: the University of California-Santa Cruz Banana Slugs, the Scottsdale Community College Fighting Artichokes, the University of Alaska-Southeast Humpback Whales and the Mary Baldwin College Squirrels.

Webster University in Missouri guaranteed their mascot would be bulletproof to protests by inventing one: the Gorlock. According to the school website, the Gorlock is a mythical creature with "the paws of a speeding cheetah, the horns of a fierce buffalo and the face of a dependable St Bernard".

And then there are the Whittier College Poets. Whittier alumni include Richard Milhous Nixon and boxing lawyer Nick Khan, but no poets, to our knowledge, have protested the use of the name.