Sporting events have become such an integral part of contemporary society that it might seem difficult to separate the person from his or her favorite team. 

Indeed, countless individuals take great pride in identifying themselves as Badgers or Bears, Wolverines or Wildcats. Many teams also identify themselves as Warriors, particularly in the United States, which often idolizes indigenous tribal cultures, but usually not by specific tribal names; thus, we have Indians, Redskins, Chiefs, Braves.

Why the adulation? Why, even, do teams need mascot names at all? Is it for the sake of wishing to identify with something else (a totemic animal spirit, or another culture)? If we call our team the Eagles, will we then feel like we can fly, or hunt, or live wildly and freely? Something must motivate this sense of identification.

In surveys of the most popular American collegiate nicknames, these ten topped the lists:

1) Eagles 
2) Tigers
3) Cougars 
4) Bulldogs 
5) Warriors
6) Lions
7) Panthers 
8) Indians
9) Wildcats 
10) Bears

This yields two groups of indigenous peoples, and eight predatory species; herbivores so rarely seem to become team mascots, as we tend to like our competitive names to be carnivorous, or at least omnivorous. The hunters mentioned here consist of no fewer than five felines, a domesticated canine, a raptor (also our national symbol), and the general category of ursines.

This seems rather unbalanced: are half of them really cats? And instead of wolves, we have a single breed of dog. Truly, wolves do not often make the proverbial cut, either; perhaps the notion that wolves are not worthy of heroic inspiration has biased many of us, right down to the designs we place on the uniforms of our competitors.

Some have concluded from the listings that racism is still too prevalent, since American Indian cultures have traditionally born the epithets "wild," "savage," "bestial," "barbaric." Those might be inspiring monikers when we cheer for our teams to come from behind and win the big game, but if these adjectives are attached to human groups, then racism does linger. And as for the non-human names, with the exception of bulldogs, the bearers on this list have been regularly hunted for centuries, including being extirpated from many regions of the earth.

The bias does remain, most especially for Indians and wolves. The original Puritan leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislated that settlers could not shoot a gun when unnecessary, unless it was at "game" consisting of Indians or wolves. Bounties were payable for many decades in America for scalps of Indians and for tails, ears, or legs of wolves; both were deemed as pests, and interfering with the mass colonization of the European-descended colonists. It seems quite intriguing to notice what we admire after it has largely left, when we no longer feel threatened by it, but use its name to make others feel threatened.

At least until halftime, anyway, of the big "game."