I'LL TRY TO KEEP CHICAGO OUT OF IT

My homestate is Illinois. Although I always thought of myself more from being from Missouri. We lived 75 miles from St. Louis so all our news stations were St. Louis based on Channels 2, 4, and 5. Our sports teams were the Hawks, Cardinals, Cardinals/Rams. Only our high school and college teams were from Illinois.

So, with Chicago lying 375 miles to the north and having no relatives from that end of the state, it might as well have been LA or New York to me. My only connection was WLS and Dick Biondi at 89.0 AM. And I could only get reception at night, oddly when KXOK, St Louis at 63.0 AM went all staticy on me.

So while Chicago was a non-issue for me, I'd have to rate my number one disappointment in my state (please omit politicos like Daly, Ryan, Walker, Carol Mostly Braun, not brains), as the University of Ilinois' decision to retire the Chief. What a PC boneheaded move!

I've written before about this topic, but it still disappoints me. If any Native American group can criticize the Chief and cause no uproar over the Wahoo emblem of the Cleveland Indians or the "savage" Atlanta Brave, complete with a borrowed tomahawk chop from Florida State, well, it simply boggles the mind.

The Chief is gone, eradicated by mis-thinking (read: dumbness). But I miss him. It was the one example of pride for the Native People. And if you don't agree, then you never attended a U of I athletic contest.