Golden Eagles voted back in at Marquette

[Apis Bull]

Golden Eagles voted back in at Marquette

By Michael Hirsley

Tribune staff reporter

June 30, 2005

MILWAUKEE -- The yearlong debate over what Marquette University's athletic teams should be nicknamed ended Wednesday, not with a bang but a rerun.

After a series of fits and starts, punctuated by protests against and discarding of an old nickname, "Warriors," and a new choice, "Gold," school officials announced the final results of a democratic vote on Wednesday.

"Golden Eagles," Marquette's nickname since 1994, was the preference of 12,562 voters, or 54 percent of those who participated in a final "name the team" runoff between Golden Eagles and Hilltoppers.

That means Marquette will officially join the Big East Conference on Friday as the Golden Eagles. It also means the school's series of forums, sensitive focus groups and votes has come full circle since a 2004 commencement speaker offered a multimillion-dollar donation if the school would restore "Warriors" as its nickname.

"It was somewhat silly, going through all that without changing anything," said DeAngelo Trotter, a Marquette junior.

He said he had favored returning to Warriors and voted for Hilltoppers in the runoff.

Graduate student Kara Groom applauded the move.

"My team was the Golden Eagles, so I'm glad," she said.

But she concurred with Trotter's assessment of the vote as pointless, as did most of the students interviewed on campus shortly after the result announced Wednesday.

"It was kind of a big deal about nothing," Groom said.

"The whole process was really silly," said Michael Schmalz, a junior. "When people heard that the trustees had chosen `Gold' this spring, it angered everyone--the Warriors people, the Golden Eagles people, even me, who could accept either of those two. When I heard that, I figured most people would favor Golden Eagles."

Especially, Schmalz added, those like him who realized that Marquette High School's teams are known as the Hilltoppers.

Graduate students Lisa Cabral and Alissa Aubin said the voting process appeased students who felt left out of earlier nickname decisions. "They came up with `Gold' without much student or alumni say," Cabral recalled. "It created a lot of upset people."

The Warriors-to-Golden Eagles switch was made independent of student and alumni input as well. Rev. Robert Wild, Marquette's president, defended the yearlong effort that left the nickname unchanged. He said it represented a "serious look" at whether Warriors could be reinstated. We [then] had an honest, brokered process that led us back to Golden Eagles. People had their chance to opt for something else, and they decided to opt for this."

Downplaying the lack of enthusiasm for Golden Eagles that prompted the marathon process, Wild attributed some of that to pro-Warriors' activists' "extra trashing" of whatever happened to be the existing nickname.

Wild said current students voted nearly 2-1 in favor of Golden Eagles over Hilltoppers.

"There are only two things that really are needed to make a nickname successful," Wild said. "No. 1 is duration of time. No. 2 is winning.

"If Nebraska can do it with Cornhuskers, which let's just say is a different nickname, I think we can certainly do well with Golden Eagles."

Wild acknowledged that what he referred to as the "Gold crisis"--trustees had to drop that nickname in the face of an instant outcry when it was announced--was a bit embarrassing, and that with Big East membership looming, Marquette needs to move on. He called for divergent factions to rally under the chosen name.

Wild's opinion was echoed by basketball coach Tom Crean and by Danny Manson, a senior who last year started a Students for Warriors group that favored the old nickname. "The people have had a chance to vote for how they feel, Marquette is still alive and well, they're the Golden Eagles and it's a heck of a name," Crean said.

Crean and Wild both noted that Dwyane Wade, a standout on Marquette's 2002-03 Final Four team and a star with the NBA's Miami Heat, has endorsed the Golden Eagles nickname under which he played.

Manson, meanwhile, said he'd "still love to be the Marquette Warriors."

But he respected the process that led to Wednesday's announcement. "Where we were in 1994 was stuck with a name that was forced on us," he said. "Today, we have a name that was voted on by a majority."

Golden Eagles voted back in at Marquette

[Brad]

Definitely one of the goofiest things in college sports...