CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — As this college town prepared for the University of Illinois football season's opener Saturday, the giddy chatter about the team's new coach and the hottest tailgate parties was overshadowed by a sense of mourning.
This is probably the last year Chief Illiniwek -- the symbol of all things sports on this Big Ten campus -- will dance.
Since 1926, one student each year has been selected to dress in buckskins and face paint and perform a three-minute athletic dance during halftime at Illini football and basketball games and other sporting events.
Last year, the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. found the Chief and his dancing a "hostile and abusive" use of Native American imagery. After two failed appeals -- and months of university staff's trying to find a way to save the icon that is stamped on everything from university stationery to La-Z-Boy loveseats -- the sense around town is that the school is finally throwing in the towel.
Heightening angst was a report last week in the Chicago Sun-Times that quoted unnamed university sources saying the school plans to drop the mascot by this spring, at the end of basketball season.
That move would allow the university to host postseason NCAA events, such as championship games, which could generate both publicity and sales revenue from visiting fans to Champaign, about 130 miles south of Chicago.
University officials have remained relatively mum about the mascot's fate, saying only that the school's Board of Trustees continues to meet and discuss the matter. Earlier, the university succeeded in preserving the use of the names "Illini" and "Fighting Illini" for its teams.
The NCAA has told the school, "If you want to host post-season games, you have to make this change," said university spokesman Tom Hardy.
Bob Williams, a spokesman for the NCAA, said, "It's Illinois' decision whether to keep the Chief, just like it's our decision to say where our tournaments can and can't be held."
Illinois is not alone in its dilemma. Last year, the university, along with 17 other schools, was placed on a list of institutions banned from hosting post-season NCAA events -- until they changed their mascot and eradicated use of its image.
The ruling came as part of a practice among schools, at both the high school and college level, to stop using references and imagery of Native Americans as mascots. Some schools have already made the transition: Southeastern Oklahoma State University, formerly the Savages, has become the Savage Storm.
