The NCAA has allowed Florida State University to continue using its "Seminoles" nickname and Chief Osceola as a mascot because the namesake tribe officially sanctions the university's use of both.
"The decision of a namesake sovereign tribe, regarding when and how its name and imagery can be used, must be respected even when others may not agree," NCAA senior vice president Bernard Franklin said in 2005, after the Executive Committee's decision to remove FSU from a list of colleges whose sports teams use Native American names and imagery in "hostile or abusive" ways.
Others, however, are still offended by the sight of a student dressed in a headdress and war paint, leading the FSU football team out of the tunnel every game atop a speckled horse, named "Renegade." David Narcomey, the general counsel for the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, for example, wrote an email to USA Today stating, "I am nauseated that the NCAA is allowing this 'minstrel show' to carry on this form of racism in the 21st century."