Drop the Names -- and the Outrage

Having played in my early 20s on a city league basketball team that we dubbed No. 10 Bike -- after the brand name of our jockstraps -- I appreciate the deep thought that young men put into team nicknames.

We could have called ourselves the Bouncy Boys, but we wanted to make a statement that reverberated throughout Lincoln, Neb., basketball and beyond.

Or, perhaps, get a laugh or ruffle some feathers.

Times have changed -- but not the urge young men have to be provocative.

This leads us to the gridiron issue that started in South County and ended up Wednesday night on CNN -- the nicknames of some teams in the upcoming Muslim Football Tournament in Irvine.

“Muslim Football Tournament” sounds like a spoof waiting to happen, but it’s a real deal scheduled for Jan. 4 at Heritage Park. It features teams with names like 4th and Goal, 88ers, Playmakerz and Fantizzle Fizzle -- a term apparently borrowed from rapper Snoop Dogg.

Besides those Americanized handles, however, a few other team names include Mujahideen and Intifada. One of the Intifadas acknowledged that the nicknames represent support for Muslims in the Middle East.

Each reader is now obliged to pause and decide if you want to scream in outrage or, like me, yawn and get on with your life.

Some local religious leaders have spoken out, to varying degrees, about the names. Two groups -- the Islamic Society of Orange County and the Council on American-Islamic Relations -- have done as much as anybody in the county to foster interfaith understanding.

Yet, their leaders were duty-bound to say something. They probably wanted to say, “Gimme a break.” Instead, they said the politic thing, which is that the footballers should have used better judgment.

The criticisms of the nicknames comes with the obvious context of world tensions between much of the Arab world and the United States. No thinking person can be unmindful of that.

But how should we apply that to a football league in Irvine? Should we keep an eye on the players on the Mujahideen team but not worry about the guys who call themselves 4th and Goal?

And why be leery of Mujahideen, despite the affinity some Islamic terrorist groups have with the word? Didn’t we Americans hail the mujahideen in the 1980s when it was linked to Afghan freedom fighters battling the Russians?

In an ironic note that shows how over-sensitized we’ve become, three mujahideen rebels visited Orange County in 1987 and were greeted at John Wayne Airport with this sign: “Welcome to Orange County, Wounded Afghan Mujahideen.”

I know. Times have changed. The terrorist attacks in the United States and the ongoing terror campaign around the world should have a sobering effect on everyone.

All true.

But I’ll bet you a dollar that on some American campus, you can find an intramural team that calls itself the Taliban. And it’ll be a white-bread team. It’s called jock humor.

Let’s fight real terror with righteous anger and cool thinking. Let’s not panic over a word that we don’t even understand. Let’s understand who the enemy is.

Whoever the enemy is, it’s not a bunch of weekend jocks who openly advertise their loyalties.

Should someone force the Intifadas to change their name? No.

Should the team members themselves, upon further review, realize the controversy isn’t worth it and rename themselves? Sounds like a plan to me.

In the meantime, what’s Arabic for “tempest in a teapot?”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821, at [email protected] or at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626.