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home > literaria > Funny Papers Budget Constraints Force Big Ten Athletic Teams to Rename Themselves after Prominent SnacksIowa HoHo’s protest, Fig-Bars beat Cheetos 78-64 Shrinking enrollments at Big Ten Schools has forced league schools to turn to corporate sponsorship as the only way to support athletic teams. League officials have recently approved a switch to snack-based team names in order to attract corporate interest. Officials are
delighted with the increased funding, and Big Ten spokesperson,
Buck Selleck, said “We feel that changing the school mascots
and nicknames gives students a meaningful introduction to the corporate
structure of adult life.” Students were
somewhat surprised by the change, and although there was initial
resistance, the increased possibilities for corporate sponsorship
of fraternities, sororities and even individual coeds wearing corporate
logos has them intrigued. One fraternity at Michigan State has already
changed its name to Eta Pizza Pi under contract to a prominent local
franchise. The strongest resistance to the change has come from the Iowa Ho-Ho alumni, and the Iowa women’s field hockey team, the first Iowa team to compete under the new snack-based team name. Dale Pendergrast, Class of 1969, said “We spent too many years where the Iowa football team was a joke, and now that we’re going somewhere, we sound like a bunch of Santa Clauses.” Iowa women’s
hockey players complained that competing players were “having
a field day” by shortening the snack-based portion of the Iowa
Ho-Ho’s name to a single syllable, an appellation that has
a pejorative connotation in major metropolitan environments. In addition
to the new Iowa HoHo’s, the other new Big Ten team names are
the Indiana Ding-Dongs, the Michigan State Cheetos, the Michigan
Fig Bars, the Purdue Twinkies, the Minnesota Fritos, the Ohio State
Snickers, the Illinois Slim Jims, the Northwestern Oreos, theWisconsin
Cheez-Wiz, and the Pennsylvania Jelly Bellys. The new Iowa
Bite Song (formerly the Iowa Fight Song) has the following lyrics,
which Iowa Ho-Ho fans are encouraged to learn: We’re
gonna bite bite bite for Iowa The rewrite
of the classic “On Wisconsin” tune is still underway,
but preliminary information at press time indicates that the new
song will be titled “Add Some Cheez-Wiz.” In an inaugural
demonstration of the new name conventions, the Michigan Fig-Bars
beat The Wisconsin Cheetos 78-64 in a recent Bisquickball game.
And, in a related story, several Iowa HoHo players were selected
to the Bike Supported Athlete Footpowderball team, including Dale
Heckroth at dollarback,, Joe Lauterbach at fullrideback,, Jack Coen
at stocksplit end, and “Moose” Jensen at block&decker. The Big Ten office (soon to be renamed the “Snack-Ten” office) is accepting comments on the new naming policy at the following e-mail address: tufftoenails@ProctrNgambl.com. |