Roger Goodell: Redskins Name Honors Native Americans

[brewens]

77. I was a Warner "Warrior" and a Sacajawea Jr High "Savage". My grade school and jr high.

Both had ridiculous caricature "Indians" for mascots but both changed names 30 some years ago because of pressure from our local Nez Perce Tribe. Sacajawea only changed to the nickname "Braves" though, but with a much more dignified mascot that the tribe didn't object to at the time.

Now they are being asked to change the name of the school entirely and do away with that mascot. Fine by me. I think they should rename it after one of a few long time teachers I had. It was a new school when I was there. It's now about 40 years old I think.

I was a little pissed off they were changing the name the first time but I was 15 I think. It changed the year after I left. I didn't have a clue why anyone would object to being "Savage"? If it was cool for us? I know it's not the same thing now.

One thing was that we played Lapwai in sports. That's the main Nez Perce town. They loved to kick our asses and were quite capable of doing it. I don't blame them if they thought it was quite a joke that their "Wildcats" would stomp the white boy "Savages". My class was a little tougher than most though. We lost two football games in three years, both to Lapwai but we beat them once too.

They had a great old coach out there that still ran the old single wing offense, a relic from the thirties. It was tough to prepare for and if coached well, still works to this day at the high school level. When I was an eigth grader, we beat Lapwai but they killed our freshman team 72-0! The next year we lost 14-12.