WThe Fighting Whites were an intramural basketball team formed at the University of Northern Colorado in 2002 and named in response to the Native American mascot controversy.
WGritty is the official mascot for the Philadelphia Flyers National Hockey League (NHL) team. He is a 7-foot (2.1 m) furry orange creature with googly eyes who wears Flyers gear. Gritty has been compared to the Phillie Phanatic, the mascot for the Philadelphia Phillies baseball team. He was created by Brian Allen of Flyland Designs with help from David Raymond, the first man to portray the Phillie Phanatic. Gritty was introduced on September 24, 2018. According to his official biography, Gritty emerged after construction at the Wells Fargo Center, the Flyers' home arena, disturbed his secret hideout. Within the months following his debut, he became an internet sensation and made appearances on several talk shows.
WIzzy was the official mascot of the Atlanta 1996 Summer Olympics. Initially named Whatizit at its introduction at the close of the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, the animated character with the ability to morph into different forms was a departure from the Olympic tradition in that it did not represent a nationally-significant animal or human figure.
WThe use of terms and images referring to Native Americans and First Nations as the name or mascot for a sports team has been a decades-long topic of public controversy in the United States and Canada. Since the 1960s, as part of the indigenous civil rights movements, there have been a number of protests and other actions by Native Americans and their supporters. The retirement of Native American names and mascots by secondary schools has been a steady trend since the 1970s. Changes accelerated in 2020 with the public actions taken in the context of issues of institutional racism in response to a number of cases of police misconduct. National attention has been focused on the prominent use of names and images by professional franchises including the Washington Football Team. and the Cleveland Indians. Each change at the professional level has been followed by changes of school teams, 29 between August and December 2020. However, according to the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) there remain 1,900 schools in 1,025 school districts that still have caricature tribal mascots.
WPowder, Copper and Coal were the official mascots of the 2002 Winter Olympics and Otto was the official mascot of the 2002 Winter Paralympics, both held in Salt Lake City, United States.
WRoni is the Olympic mascot of the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, created by Don Moss. The mascot is a raccoon, which is a familiar animal from the mountainous region of the Adirondacks where Lake Placid is situated. The name Roni comes from the word racoon in Iroquoian, the language of the native people from the region of the State of New York and Lake Placid, and was chosen by Lake Placid school children.
WThe Washington Redskins name controversy involved the name and logo used until 2020 by the National Football League (NFL) franchise located in the Washington metropolitan area now known as the Washington Football Team. Native American groups had questioned the use of the "Redskins" name and image since the 1960s; the topic began receiving widespread public attention in the 1990s. In July 2020, following a wave of racial awareness and reforms in wake of national protests after the killing of George Floyd, major sponsors of the league and team threatened to stop supporting them until the name was changed. The team initiated a review which resulted in the decision to retire its name and logo, playing as the Washington Football Team pending adoption of a more permanent name.