Schiddy writes:

Minnesota major college and professional sports team names and mascots must go. There are many reason, which I will suffer the Schiddy masses to endure as I state my case.

Reason #1. Our mascots don’t pass the testosterone-headline litmus test. This test asks: How well does a team name lend itself to bold headlines about how they defeated an opponent? In our case, almost all of our teams fail miserably. Take a team like the Detroit Lions. “Lions Maul the Panthers” or “Lions rip apart the Orioles” let you know that they thoroughly defeated their opponent in vivid and visual terms. It doesn’t have to be violent either. For example the Philadelphia Flyers “Flew past Chicago” or the “Pittsburg Steelers Forge Victory.”

So what can we come up with for the Minnesota Twins? “Twins conjoin Tigers”? “Twins victory identical to previous wins? It just doesn’t really inspire the masses.

And what about the University of Mn. Golden Gophers? The Headline might read: “Gophers create ruts in Wolverines front Yard.” About the only team the Gophers works well with is the Ohio State Buckeyes: “Gophers gnaw on Buckeyes and then store them for winter.” Still even that is not very dramatic.

The Minnesota Wild. Their name connotes a rugged wilderness and the climate and weather that produce it. Weather and dramatic headlines, well that actually is the topic for another H. Schiddy rant, but lets apply our headline test to the Wild: ‘Lemaire’s Pucksters Apply Low Pressure to Devils.’ Not exactly grabbin' ya and making you want to run out and paint your body in green red and scream, “Lets Play Hockey” on W. 7th street at 2:00am in the morning. I’m actually not sure what would make me do that, but I know a guy who could probably tell me (Geno).

Yet we have the Minnesota Vikings. Surely with a name that conjures up images of those historical Norse warriors and their iconic ships some rich headlines can be produced, and indeed they have. Just Google Minnesota Vikings and “Cruise” or “Boat” and you will come up with all kinds of interesting headlines.

O.k. o.k. you say, what about the Timberwolves. Surely they elicit plenty of great headlines with that name? Indeed they have. You got me there. Head lines like “Wolves playoff chances fading like endangered species population.” I guess that would be a pretty long headline but you get the idea.

Reason #2: Our mascots are lame.
Now don’t get me wrong all mascots are pretty silly goofy lame. But Goldy the Gopher looks like a bad theatre prop suit from some children’s community theatre production. And he is so wimpy. I was at the U in the 80’s when Lou Holtz designed a more muscular, buff Goldy with muscular arms and chests. One imagined that under all that rodent hair he had a formidable six pack. (I know I do under all my hair.) Years before Steroids became all the rage, our mascot in the late 80’s for those years was known as ‘Goldy on Steroids.’ So even giving the mascot synthetic testosterone could not help reduce the ridicule he endured, although it was done behind his back at that point. You didn’t want to be on the business end of those pectorals. I believe he nicknamed them Chip and Dale.

Then you have Crunch for the T-wolves. As in crunch time. Get it. This wolf mascot actually looks better than the others, but I think the guy or gal who dwells within that mascot is a little dehydrated or something. I have not seen Crunch do a new bit for about 15 years. He is famous for jumping on trampolines and doing acrobatic dunks. O.k. we get it that you can jump on a trampoline and dunk the basketball guy. That real difficult. Jessica Tandy called; she wants her vertical leap back.

TC Bear. He’s…well…a big ol’ huggable oaf of a lug. Explain to me though…why a bear? Do the Chicago Bears have a couple of Twins for their mascot? Is it because during the Twins formidable years one of their sponsors was Hamm’s Beer, which featured a Cartoon bear that kind of resembles TC bear? I’m just not getting it.

The Vikings. Oh my sweet lord. What a travesty. Gone is the tough grizzled long white haired stern Viking mascot of my youth, waving his broadsword encouragingly at throngs of frozen spectators braving the bitter North blizzards to cheer the real Vikings on to another victory against the wimpy Bears, Rams, or Cardinals. Now, we have Ragnar, the epitome of a aged balding yuppie from the 80’s who wears a business suit all week but on the weekend dresses up to look like a biker. But Ragnar doesn’t ride his ridiculously short-piped bike on the county roads of Minnetonka in his $900 leathers. Instead he dons a little purple and revs his bike in the end zone of the metrodrone. But that is not all. No that is not all. For in addition to this Teflon biker, we also have Viking mascot number two. ----------- looks like a cross between Dino from the Flintstones and Barney, with the result being a Dinosaur that looks like Barney’s dumb illiterate cousin from Appalachia, (or if you prefer, Western Wisconsin). Everybody sing along now, ‘I love Red, McCombs loves me, this mascot, is a perfect legacy, to what he thought of the Viking fan base, now he’s gone and we’re last place.’ (Sung to the tune of “I love you, you love me,” the Barney theme Song.

Reason #3: I could come up with a lot better ideas for mascots, and team names.
The Minnesota Twins we would keep as a name, I’m resisting the urge to say we should rename them the Mn. Corporate Welfare Funded Bankers. But forget about TC bear. Instead replace him with the next hi profile pair of conjoined twins that come along. Instead of shipping them off to the Mayo clinic for 25 hour surgery accompanied with blow by blow updates from surgeons: “We think the surgery is going really well, at least from where I’m at. There are 15 surgeons in front of me, so I can’t really see that well…”
Instead of that, we raise them as our own, slap some Twin uniforms on them, and have double your mascot pleasure!

The Vikings mascot could be my Uncle Frank. He is 85 now, blind as a bat, and slowed down quite a bit. But put a horned helmet on his head and strap a sword to his hip, and he is tougher and has more guts and True Grit then Ragnar or Barney’s retarded cousin any day.

The Minnesota Wild should change there name to the Minnesota Charlestown Chiefs, after the team from Slap Shot, undoubtedly the coolest Hockey team ever except for the Rochester John Marshall State Champion team from 1977 (WFO). I know it is not politically correct to name the team after Native American leaders, and Charleston is not in Minnesota, but it is the price we would need to pay to be the coolest. Take it from me; I pay that price every day of my life.

The T-wolves could keep there name, but they should replace the fake wolf with a giant-sized Chalupa, and re-introduce the coolest promotion they ever had where they gave away free Chalupas from Taco Bell if the team scored over 100 points.

The Minnesota Golden Gophers have been the gophers for over a hundred years. I guess the gopher is the state rodent…or something to that effect. We should probably leave that alone, and it would be hard to have something else other than the gopher as the mascot, but how about this. Once we build the outdoor stadium, we introduce wild gophers to the natural turf, who will create holes and furrows and ruts that only are team is aware of, and then use it to our advantage. It would be a symbiotic relationship, with gophers and groundskeepers finally living in harmony after all these years.