Chief Illiniwek event called off over legal threat

[October 15, 2010]  CHAMPAIGN (AP) -- Plans for a third annual unofficial performance on the University of Illinois campus by the retired Chief Illiniwek mascot have been scrapped after the school threatened legal action.

Roger Huddleston is co-founder of the Honor the Chief Society that planned the event for the weekend of Oct. 23 football game against Indiana. He told The News-Gazette in Champaign the group can't afford a legal fight.

An attorney for the university threatened to sue over potential trademark violations.

The group has held the event the past two years, renting out the Assembly Hall.

Illinois stopped using the mascot in 2007 after NCAA sanctions and years of pressure by American Indians and others who saw it as a demeaning caricature.

[Associated Press]

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