I certainly hope so. But as yet, I haven't seen an organized write-in campaign, and that's what it'll take. You make a fair point, but even still, it's a poor strategy. 1) The fact that we're talking about it really means very little. They had all of our eyes. We are the hardcore followers. This in no way implies any sort of publicity among prospective fans. 2) There is obviously going to be controversy surrounding the name, whether some people choose to understand why or not. 3) The timing is exceedingly poor. Why announce now, while you're still playing? Essentially you're saying to all the fans who are still coming to games, "Thanks for coming down to see our team! Oh, by the way, we might not be this team at this time next year. Or we might! Who knows?!" 4) Contest like this--and the buzz which comes with them--are best reserved for the off season, when you really need eyeballs, and when DII soccer essentially winks out of existence. What good is building buzz for a team that won't make the playoffs at the end of their season? The team is wasting their publicity bump. Not only is it not sports--making it a bad sports strategy--it's bad business as well!
I'd like to suggest a write-in name of "Laughing Stock", which will nicely sum up where we sit in the league. We can vote on the worst player at the end of a game and then throw rotten fruit their way. In fact we could really embrace the medieval times theme and have jousting for the kids, 'where's the witch?' competitions, all served up with flagons of gatorade. Also, can we stop with the "we are the 2nd best attended team in the league" lie. The FO is even using it in their PR now, despite the fact that they have fudged the numbers all season. The actual crowd looks virtually the same as it did last year and the poor on-field performances are, unsurprisingly, doing nothing to increase support. No doubt Saturday and Wednesday will be sellouts again, just to keep our spot on the attendance charts. Perhaps instead of wasting money on a re-naming campaign, we should be sending our FO to San Antonio to learn how to present a slick, professional team into a new league and sit atop the standings in their debut season.
They could easily re-imagine "Chiefs" without the "NDN" connotation. Send them to Orlando. Save yourselves the airfare.
I did not say it was a good reason. I said it was the most-often stated reason. I personally don't agree with the rationale. But I was addressing the idea that longevity of a racist name didn't have much to do with inertia. I believe it does. Also, the Peoria Chiefs don't use Indian imagery anymore, either. They went to a fire dog (that type of chief) in 2004. So there's another instance of someone moving away from that type of identity, while I'm still looking for someone to give me examples of recent teams moving towards them. Would you agree, Mike, that the imagery is part of the issue here? That if they were the Atlanta Chiefs but didn't use a headdress-wearing mascot or promote typical stereotypes, that they'd be on stronger footing than the old Chiefs identity, or do you think that would just be a wink-wink-nudge-nudge way around it?
Maybe I will go to the 59th Pow wow and take a poll on how they feel about the name, maybe I can get them to vote for one of the names. BTW Mr. Warmth is going to get mad by the name of their dance competition.
By a few absolutists, probably, but not by many, which is why the KC Chiefs don't get much flak. The "Atlanta" Chiefs logo is probably pushing it a bit more than KC's branding. That being said, when KCFan dresses up in war paint and a head dress, he should have his ass kicked, just a RedskinFan should. To be fair to all the plastic Irish in the country and practicing to lapsed Catholics who root for ND, what they choose to be offended by is their business. Just because they choose not to be doesn't mean that their views represent us. The difference being that from really the 1830's through the late 1970's, there have been very concerted efforts to essentially end the culture of American Indians. From the Assimilation Schools and very aggressive efforts on adoption of Indian children by non-Indians, to the federal government unilaterally dissolving tribal constitutions/governments and a few cases, cash payouts to people to accept the end of their tribe as "federally recognized". For all the crap that Irish and Catholics have had to put up with in America, 1600 to Yesterday, they haven't had anything like that to deal with. Not to mention the view of Indians that ranged between "Noble Savage" to blood thirsty rapin' sub-human murderers. And to cap it all off, during the early 20th century, there were a few successful legislative movements that allowed a state to declare an Indian "incompetent" and seize their land for sale to others, which is why many Indians either refused to accept Allotment or represented themselves as "part white" so that their land could not be seized. We haven't always been "citizens" with "civil rights" in this country. Now, starting in about the mid-20's through 50's with the rise of radio/movies/TV, these new media formats expanded the mythology of the "Wild West" that had been born out of fictional serial books and/or "news" from the frontier and other print, all of this mythology only became more reinforced these stereotypes. During this period, we also see the rise of both college and high school athletics and many of those chose to select "mascots" that were supposed to represent something terrifying to their opponents. Too often, that was "Indians". You have to ask yourself, in the last 30+ years, why few, if any new professional sports or really amateur even, teams have chosen American Indian branding, don't you? And of those that have, how many have simply rebranded in the face of the change in public opinion. You also have to ask yourself why no other ethnic minority group has been so "honored" by the majority population? Probably because of the stereotypical views on other said groups largely held by the majority population during the same period. So if no one else has to put up with it, why do Indians? Let me know when you find one, because when I ask for those examples, I get a lot of silence As above and earlier, yes. This is how the Golden State, nee Philadelphia Warriors don't get involved in this, because everyone has forgot about this... And they certainly haven't tried to bring it back. KC gets away with Chiefs because they wisely stopped using this... Which was a riff off of their old Dallas Texans Logo I do think it's closer to a backdoor around it and it would largely work, not because people want to see the Chiefs logo come back, but because no one outside of the fans of Atlanta and US Soccer know the Silverbacks exist. Searching for KC Chiefs logo also turns this up... Now excuse me while I go fap to this
Go for it. I may or may not have sent a link to the Silverbacks "Choose the Name" contest to one or more, shall we say, "activists" who really like to go off on these things. Depends largely on the region and the age of the person you're asking. You'll notice it doesn't say "Native American Center of Chicago".
And this is the part the people who either don't know or don't care to know about American history (and by that I mean "white folks") miss.
Dude, everybody fudges the numbers. Especially in minor league sports, you don't think the Railhawks or the Stars do the same thing? Paying customers are paying customers whether they show up or not. Even though they aren't your traditional sellout that's packed to the gills, we still put on a good showing compared with Edmonton or Tampa Bay. Also, I'm not against going back to the Ruckus. Wish that was the third option.
The accusation is not that the Silverbacks sold those tickets and the people didn't show up. That happens all the time and it would be money in Atlanta's pocket. It is the belief that those tickets were given away and counted to inflate attendance. So the Atlanta FO can say things like "we are the 2nd best attended team in the league" when their actual numbers are probably similar to their 2011 average of 2,866.
Well this board isn't necessarily a good measure of eyeballs the Silverbacks are trying to attract, you're right. But it does represent a microcosm of the coverage "Decision 2012" is getting from within the US Soccer community. Guys like Lalas, Twellman, and Harkes have tweeted about it. 11 Alive did their piece on Wynalda recently. They made it into the AJC. I'd also argue that the timing couldn't be better. And as someone said before, the Silverbacks are taking down the information of everybody who votes in order to sell season tickets. There was a feeling that after Wynalda left to go back to FSC that he wasn't coming back (greener pastures), at least that's what I was afraid of. The Silverbacks are out of the playoff race officially, and are three games away from a long offseason. Might as well strike while the iron is hot. That way you can get fans in the stadium to vote on the name change. I also believe that the controversy thing is a bit overstated. This is Division 2 football. In the minor leagues, the old adage that "any publicity is good publicity" is true. Look up the antics of Bill Veeck. My letting the fans vote on it, the organization has plausible deniability. If the fans vote Chiefs it's "Hey, we're giving them what they want." But if it's Silverbacks? No big deal.
From the 1950s. When we could still have white performers in blackface and that was okay. When Amos 'n' Andy was still on television. And when Bill Veeck was hopeful of helping race relations, not starting controversy. Bill Veeck's "antics" included sending a little person up to bat, letting the fans hold up signs to vote on strategy and an exploding scoreboard. Not branding his teams with wholly inappropriate imagery. I'm sure BP is totally okay with the publicity from Deepwater Horizon. That's why they didn't spend a penny on damage control after the fact. You can eventually overcome bad publicity. But a potential - and let's be honest, that's all it is at this point, we're assuming facts not in evidence - broo-ha-ha over "Chiefs" is unlikely to sell any more tickets to an NASL team. There's publicity and then there's notoriety. Notoriety is usually bad for business. Yeah.....not thinking they have plausible deniability. If the fans staged a write-in campaign for a completely inappropriate term describing homosexuals or African-Americans or women, would the organization be helpless to stop it from becoming the brand of the organization they own?
Dude, I'm well aware everyone's at it and I agree I don't think we have the worst attendance, probably somewhere in the middle, but there's something inanely ridiculous about making up the numbers, then bragging about it in PR e-mails to fans. I go to the games, I can see how many people are there. The Chiefs retro night had tickets at a few bucks each and they claimed a sellout. At the fan appreciation night they GAVE tickets away and claimed 6,000 fans (1,000 over capacity). I went to both, there was a decent crowd, but plenty of free seats around.
Devil's Advocate: Do you think Atlanta's fairly large Latino population, a large plurality being of Mestizo descent, would take offense to the Chiefs logo? I'm asking because I honestly don't know. If so I would change my stance. That would marketing suicide and a perspective that I hadn't really thought of.
So racially offensive imagery is okay when its not your target market and/or not at least X% of the population?
No, like I said it's a thought that didn't occur to me at first. But I'm curious if North American Indian imagery elicited the same reaction south of the border. I'm not married to the Chiefs idea and would like them to switch the connotation away from the Indian reference if they went that route. Personally I think they should have added Ruckus and Apollos to the poll if they really wanted to be fair and less controversial.
Not very likely, since you know, it's not them. When you think you're honoring someone with a team name or imagery or as is now the hipster cause to appropriate NDN things out of a sense of irony or something, this is what you look like to a lot of Indians.
Just renewed my season tickets. Ticket guy says the vote so far has been very strong for keeping the Silverback name. We still have month to go till they announce the results.