Following up on our dim sum conversation, here's a story from July 27, 2000 explaining how Hawaii football dumped the Rainbow mascot for Warriors.
And this from the next day:"Being called the Rainbows, especially for men's teams, left them open to ridicule," Mosley said. "Warriors has a much stronger connotation."
But after receiving praise for highlighting native culture in the new design, the university is being criticized by gay rights advocates. That's after athletic director Hugh Yoshida acknowledged the decision to change the logo stemmed, in part, from concerns about how the rainbow has become a symbol of gay pride and acceptance.If the football team showed some serious interest in studying Hawaiian warrior traditions, I might be more sympathetic. But they have adopted the Warrior mascot merely to be macho in a 21st century American football grunt-shove-growl-and-smile-for-television kind of way. Somehow I don't think King Kamehameha's warriors would have been very scared of these guys."That logo really put a stigma on our program at times in regards to it's part of the gay community, their flags and so forth," Yoshida told KGMB-TV in remarks aired yesterday. "Some of the student athletes had some feelings in regards to that."
