One truth I've learned about semi-retirement is that in this phase of life, I have far more time on my hands than money in the wallet.
That's not all bad, either.
It allows the mind to wander into areas that time constraints and job pressures in the past might have prevented.
With that in mind, and with UND faced with no athletic director in charge and a president on his way out, some free advice might be welcomed. Or not.
The clock is ticking three years and counting on UND to work out an agreement with the Sioux tribes in North Dakota in order to win their support for retaining the Fighting Sioux name.
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It might be a hill too steep to climb, on both sides, for an understanding to be reached. I hope not.
If one is to be reached, perhaps it is time for UND to think outside the box.
Thousands of UND alums feel a strong attachment to the Fighting Sioux name; there are others who feel it is time to scrap the name and move on.
Here are a few suggestions, some pulled from the recesses of my mind, some generated from a conversation about the issue with an old friend at a recent Sioux hockey game.
They might offer a way to tell the Sioux tribes that the name still means a lot to UND and to show them that in a tangible manner.
I don't have the easy answer on how these suggestions can be implemented. With creative thinking and planning, I don't see why they could not be part of an agreement between the Sioux tribes and UND.
-- Give a percentage of every item sold be it cap, jacket, jersey or trinket bearing the Sioux name or logo to the Sioux tribes. That could even be extended to tickets sold. With poverty a problem on most reservations, a steady flow of income would be of immense benefit. A system of funneling money to the reservations in turn for their support of UND keeping the Fighting Sioux name might appear to some as crass.
With that in mind, here are other suggestions:
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-- UND has a nationally known medical school. Set up a program where the medical students, as part of their training and education, serve an internship on the Sioux reservations. It would be of great value for the medical students in becoming better doctors, and the extra medical help on the reservations would fill a dire need.
-- UND has a nationally known law school. If the plan sketched above can be put into motion, why not involve the law school, too? Law students can serve an internship on the reservations where hands-on work with the tribes without charge would be of great benefit to both students and the reservations. I'll leave the particulars of these plans to those with far more smarts and wisdom than I possess.
UND has taken small steps with the Sioux tribes, sending basketball teams for example to the reservation to put on clinics and inviting tribal leaders to the campus for talks.
All that's well and good, and encouraged.
But talk is cheap. UND needs to back up its support for the Fighting Sioux name and the tribes with something more concrete.
These proposals aren't the end-all to reaching an accord on the retention of the Fighting Sioux name.
But they could be a strong signal from UND to the Sioux tribes that the school is willing to do far more for the reservations in the future in return for their support of keeping the name associated with UND.
Virg Foss, who retired from full-time writing for the Herald in 2005, can be reached at virgfoss@yahoo.com or at (701) 772-9272.
