Outside of Seattle/Tacoma, very redneck. Get up to the mountains where they make all the meth and the cattle farms are pretty redneck too, but they have stripper coffee shacks nearby.
You don't even have to go that far, I used to live in a coastal Navy town that had a meth problem. I bought my car from a dealership that got busted 6 months later. KFC was where they sold the meth that was cooked in the Ford dealership across the street. I almost miss Oak Harbor...
Oh yeah, I've been around the country enough to know that anywhere outside of the city is Red, no matter what state you're in, but "Redneck" just has a very specific southern connotation to me.
I was about to comment how cool the name Bombards would be, but then I read the Istan-Bulls and sorry but you should be legally obligated to go with that name when it's an option, it's that good.
Can confirm. I grew up about 30 min from Seattle and was on the border of redneck territory. I played high school sports with schools out "in the country" and was able a 15 min drive from some ranches and whatnot.
I feel like if an LLM spat this out every time the word "Turk" is mentioned they'd do a few more iterations before launch but in any comment thread on Reddit or Lemmy we get this wonderful reverse Turing test
My small town's mascot was the Tigers. The next town to the north? Tigers. The town west of us? Their school shut down in 1997, but they were Tigers, too. The town south? Panthers. There is a town in the next county north that also is the Panthers.
Lots of big cats. No Cougars/Pumas/Mountain Lions, despite the fact that they're totally a native species. There was one town whose mascot was the Bobcats.
My High School was not a sport high school. More or less all the cool kids were what would be considered the band nerds and arts took up half the foot print of the school.
We were originally officially the... Ahem... "Tillicums and Frontiersmen". Which most kids were only vaguely aware of. There were no mascots, our teams basically just used our town's name and sport was one of those things you like vaguely knew was happening. Nobody used the team names because we all thought it was stupid.
About 15 years ago the conversation developed that it was a pretty colonial name and not cool and they changed it around the same time three other schools in neighboring towns did theirs. All three towns seemingly independently (a student led conspiracy was suspected but never confirmed) all named their school teams "the (insert school name here) Storm".
So now there's just three teams all called Storm with zero mascots and people continue to not give a damn about sports... So I guess sometimes you get a theme?
Big cats, wolves, eagles, and uncomfortable caricatures of people. Heaven forbid a school ever choose, like, a local frog or hedgehog or whatever for a mascot.
My catholic school growing up was the Wildcats. Every catholic school seemed to be called the Wildcats. Then I found out the city's catholic high school has the Buttons as their mascot. The Central High School Buttons. San Antonio, TX.
ELI5: It's politically incorrect to use a group of people as a mascot.
ELIHypocrisy: This mostly gained momentum after an NFL team called the Redskins started getting flak for basically using what became a derogatory name for native americans as a mascot/team name. Pejoration is neat.
The pendulum kept swinging and it removed even non-derogatory names as mascots.
So what could be a different legitimate name used to represent being awesome and excelling on a team where you're supposed to win constantly started getting shut down. Think Chiefs, Blackhawks (switched to the bird not the people), but they keep the name because these are okay despite plenty of people being able to use almost any cultural group in a derogatory way.
I understand it, but it felt like the usual smart changes that went too far. I blame white people white knighting / virtue signalling too much.
RIP Mia from Land O Lakes butter. You can understand it, you don't have to like it. The opinion of the masses doesn't require logic, only momentum. Doesn't matter if the mascot was an accurate representation of someone, by those people, paid, generally loved, white folk will still kill it.
E: It's okay if they're primarily associated with white people or the in-group... or certain country people... not some white people though... or some people from certain countries... or some people from certain geological areas.
Americans, Texans, Yankees? Fine.
Irish, Canucks, Indians? You'll need context.
Turks, Sicilians, Confederates? Probably not fine since they're too brown or too American. Americans? That's fine though, even though Americans killed far more natives than Confederates ever did through systematic governmental genocide... Indians? Ok, Dot not feather Indians get that one now... turns out racism is pretty universal but it's okay if you're part of the in group. Don't emphasize what makes them unique or it's racist... New characterization requires that you don't emphasize what makes someone unique even if it's a point of pride or completely relevant to their people.
Does it matter if you name your team after yourselves? No. Still not fine. You have to first remove the name, wait a period, then give yourself the name back. It has to be allowed to marinate in PC limbo like colored people, african american, black, or people of color.
You have to know what arbitrary linguistic rules people decided are more correct despite them all attempting to describe the same thing. Like trying to approximate someone's skin color/genetic heritage and/or ethnicity.
People first language! Because it's better if X is first and not Y...despite describing the same thing and fuck you for not knowing any better by not being part of the In-Group!
Conclusion: People can try to logic their way through it all the way they want, but the ELI5 is the true part. They'll want exceptions for everything though as long as it's about yourselves... despite some people being forced to be those things against their will or having no to little ability to change where they we from or what professions they got into. Or that names and terms change meaning constantly and it's a futile attempt to give yourself an exception because it's all about you, not about others... even though it is lol.