"For a minute there, I was hopeful that the University of North Dakota might do the right thing. Not a chance. Even from beyond the grave, Ralphie is pulling the strings.

Casino owner and Nazi memorabilia collector Ralph Engelstad was 72 when he died in 2002, a year after the lavish hockey palace in Grand Forks, N.D., that bears his name stamped the cartoon image of a feather-wearing Indian warrior on the Red River Valley.

Engelstad, a native of Thief River Falls, Minn., was a backup goalie at North Dakota in the late 1940s who made a crusade of preserving the school's Fighting Sioux nickname and logo. At his life's end, he tried to ensure that the nickname could never be eradicated by installing a ridiculous profusion of Indian heads in the $104 million Ralph Engelstad Arena, home of the Fighting Sioux hockey team. Ralphie wanted to make it impossible to remove the logo from his tomb, and he may have succeeded."

Get the Story:
Nick Coleman: Ralphie still runs the show at UND (The Minneapolis Star Tribune 8/17)
pwlat

NCAA Announcement:
NCAA Executive Committee Issues Guidelines for Use of Native American Mascots at Championship Events (August 5, 2005)

Relevant Links:
University of North Dakota - http://www.und.edu
Fighting Sioux - http://www.fightingsioux.com
NCAA Minority Opportunities and Interests Committee - http://www1.ncaa.org/eprise/main/
membership/governance/assoc-wide/moic/index.html
National Coalition on Racism in Sports and Media - http://www.aimovement.org/ncrsm

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