Chief's final dance is tonight

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By Randy Kindred | Thursday, February 22, 2007 12:32 AM CST | () comments

University of Illinois graduate student Dan Maloney, portrays Chief Illiniwek at halftime of the Illinois-Northwestern basketball game at Assembly Hall in Champaign, Ill. on Sunday, Feb. 18, 2007. The dance was the UI mascot's next-to-last performance after the UI board of trustees announced last week that Chief Illiniwek would be retired after his halftime performance at next Wednesday's game against Michigan. (AP Photo/str/John Dixon)

From grade school students to high school students and up through Illinois State University, there was no difference between a right answer and a correct response. They were interchangeable and universally accepted, from first-grade spelling to college biology.

Like nap time and recess, those days are gone.

Right and correct — as in politically correct — have become estranged in the verbal sparring over outgoing University of Illinois mascot Chief Illiniwek.

Thousands of Illini graduates, students and fans will tell you the end of the Chief’s 81-year reign, which comes tonight at halftime of a home basketball game against Michigan, is the product of NCAA meddling and political correctness run amuck. They see nothing “right” about that.

To Native American leaders who find the Chief’s dress/dance offensive and demeaning, the decision to drop him by Illinois’ Board of Trustees is long overdue.

Some fall in between. They wonder why the NCAA feels compelled to legislate nicknames and mascots, and at the same time, understand how some can be — in NCAA speak — “abusive.”

Consider them the outsiders in all of this, bystanders in an exhaustive, decades-long debate. They feel neither outrage nor jubilation, simply relief it is all over. They welcome the prospect of focus returning to what happens during games, not at halftime.

It is not a popular position. They are outcasts in both camps, viewed as the enemy for not choosing a side.

That said, even the most ardent pro-Chief advocates must find some comfort in the lengthy, bitter fight being over.

Don’t they?

Not on your life.

“I’m not glad it’s over,” said John Sutton of rural El Paso, Ill. “We were willing to keep fighting. To us, it’s just kind of a sickening thing. We’ve been going (to games) there for more than 50 years.”

John and Carol Sutton graduated from Illinois in the early 1950s. They had four children and two grandchildren earn Illinois degrees.

Like so many, they consider the Chief a proud, revered symbol. Retiring him is like giving away a piece of their heart and soul.

“It’s a shame that it’s come down to what it has,” John Sutton said. “So few

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people are telling a whole bunch of people what they can have and can’t have.”

Sutton blames the NCAA, which in 2005 announced that schools with mascots deemed to have offensive American Indian imagery no longer could host postseason NCAA events.

Yet, in ensuing months, Florida State’s Seminole was granted a reprieve because the namesake tribe gave its blessing and filled its coffers in return. The Utah Utes and others won appeals.

“I think most people would be disappointed (in losing the Chief), but they could live with it better if the NCAA had equal treatment for everybody,” Sutton said. “It would still be tough, but it would be more palatable.”

Instead, emotions will run high tonight when the Chief performs his final dance.

Lynn Radtke of Normal, Ill., has seen a lot of them, having grown up in Champaign and graduating from Illinois in 1980. She was a member of the Marching Illini, playing for many of the Chief’s performances.

Her son is a freshman at Illinois and a member of the Orange Krush. He will be at the Assembly Hall tonight. His mother will be there in spirit.

“It’s a wonderful tradition and it’s going to be gone,” said Radtke, now a physician at the university’s health center. “Being in the Marching Illini, you get a completely different perspective. You see how truly respectful the performance is. But I think the Board of Trustees’ hands were pretty much tied.”

The resulting decision has hit hard in the Joe Morrow household in Normal. Morrow is a 1977 Illinois graduate and president of the Illini Club of McLean County. His daughter is a sophomore at Illinois and she bought six Chief T-shirts after Friday’s announcement.

She and her younger sister asked for and received framed pictures of the Chief for Christmas.

“I guess you have to keep the memories living somehow. It transcends generations,” said Joe Morrow, speaking as an Illini grad more than a club president.

“When I was in high school (at Lincoln), the Chief came for an assembly. It left a memory in me. Certainly when I attended Illinois, I always found it to be a stirring tribute.”

Carrie Corson wasn’t as enamored as a student. She transferred to Illinois for her final two years, graduating in 1999.

Now a public relations employee at Bloomington’s Country Insurance & Financial Services, she said she “didn’t fully understand what was going on” with the Chief.

However …

“I think after leaving and coming back, you understand what he brings,” Corson said. “As an alum, it’s something you waited for and felt proud to be a part of.”

“It’s a very well-done presentation,” said Normal resident and 1960 Illinois grad Tom Shilgalis, who like Corson, Radtke and Sutton is an Illini Club member. “I’ve seen many Chiefs over the years. It’s not like a mascot goofing around with cheerleaders or something like that.”

Debbie Babcock expects to have tears in her eyes tonight. An Illini Club board member from Bloomington, her emotions run “very deep.”

“I think it will be very emotional for everybody,” she said. “I know it was (Sunday vs. Northwestern), and this will be the last hurrah.”

It will be over.

Life will go on.

That should count for something.

Right?

Randy Kindred is sportswriter for the Bloomington Pantagraph.