Posts Tagged ‘sports’

It Took Billions to Kill the Redskins

December 3, 2024

Daines continues to fight for reinstatement of the Redskins logo honoring John “Two Guns” White Calf but the team’s current owner, Josh Harris, is firm in his position abut not changing the team’s name back.

On Saturday, Mary Papenfuss included the following in an article she wrote for The Independent web site:

“The decision to change the name and mascot came after years of organizing from Native communities and allies, and billions of dollars from investors in the ‘Change The Name’ movement. Going back on this commitment should be a non-starter,” Angel Charley, executive director of IllumiNative, said in a statement.

One word jumped out at me when I read it, so I put it in boldface type so readers couldn’t miss it. I didn’t make this up. Activists spent billions, meaning not just millions but multiple billions, of dollars getting the Redskins name changed.

Three questions come quickly to mind:

  1. Where did these billions of dollars come from?
  2. Where did these billions of dollars go?
  3. What else could these billions of dollars have been used for?

IllumiNative.org, the website for Angel Charley, describes the organization thusly: “IllumiNative is a Native woman-led racial and social justice organization dedicated to increasing the visibility of—and challenging the narrative about—Native peoples.”

The 2023 Form 990 states the income that year as $2,126,490, coming almost entirely from two unnamed individuals. $5,000 came from a third unnamed individual. The 2023 return was for a partial year because the organization was formed in 2023. Obviously Angel Charley could not have been at this organization very long due to it’s having been in existence only a short time. She was with Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women the previous seven years. It was probably at her previous position where the billions of dollars were raised to get an NFL team to change its name and logo. But this doesn’t tell us where the money came from.

A September 7, 2023 article by Kerry J. Byrne of Fox News identified the likely source of the billions in funding. The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) had lobbied for decades to erase the Redskins name for decades. He claimed they bragged about their work “fostering a proactive partnership” with the team. Could that mean threatening the team if they didn’t bend to NCAI’s wished?

But where did the NCAI get the billions in funding Angel Charley claimed had been spent in this campaign. One need look no further than George Soros and his Open Society Foundations. He has hundreds of billions of dollars available to use toward changing society in the way he wants. One recent example is the number of attorneys general and district attorneys he got elected by funding their campaigns. The result of that has been the crime waves experienced in the jurisdictions the electees control. Soros isn’t NCAI’s only funder. Their website lists seven federal government agencies and five tax-exempt foundations which give them taxpayers’ money.

We now know Angel Charley’s claim was probably accurate but what was the money spent on?  

George Woodruff

March 8, 2024

Even those who have read Gridiron Gypsies: How the Carlisle Indians Shaped Modern Football may wonder why I’m writing about George Woodruff because I’ve already taken Sally Jenkins to task for her deceitful treatment of him. The reason I’m writing about him now is because a person who is writing Woodruff’s biography contacted me about information concerning his hiring by Carlisle in 1905. This request caught me cold because I hadn’t given it much thought. Woodruff, a future hall-of-fame coach, was available and Carlisle management thought they could use him because Pop Warner had returned to Cornell.

George Washington Woodruff had elevated Penn to make it the fourth member of The Big Four alongside Harvard, Yale, and Princeton but undergrads were dissatisfied with recent results. Although he won three national championships while going 124-15-2 over his 10-year career at Penn (1892-1901), the 5-loss 1901 season was unacceptable, causing him to be let go. He led Illinois to a pitiful 8-6 1903 season (only one win was against a college team – Purdue).

Having political connections to President Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, he took a government position in Washington, DC. There, he officiated the Bucknell-Georgetown game played on November 12, 1904. This suggests that he was still keeping his hand in the game.

On August 14, 1905 Penn announced that Woodruff was to be on its “advisory coaching board,” whatever that means, along with Carl Williams, George McFadden, and George Brooke. On September 2, 1905, datelined Carlisle, Pa, “The management of the Carlisle Indian School’s football eleven today announced that they had secured the services of George Woodruff…The Indian School authorities have had him for some time, but did not announce having secured him until his arrival today.” How long “for some time” is debatable because less than three weeks earlier, he was associated with Penn.

The details of exactly he came to be employed by Carlisle have yet to be uncovered. Any information regarding that would be most appreciated.

Woodruff went 7-2 at Carlisle in 1905 before leaving for Washington after the victory over West Point. Some credit him with the three wins and two losses in games that were played after he left but he was not involved with those games.