Dressed as a Seminole warrior and riding horseback - galloping across the gridiron - a man attempts to ignite the Florida State crowd at a collegiate football game.
As the Cleveland Indians take the field during a recent baseball game, players wear uniforms with the toothy Chief Wahoo sewn onto their sleeves and hats.
While the Atlanta Braves rally in the late innings against their opponent, fans in unison perform the "tomahawk chop" to the rhythm of a presumed Native American song.
"The tomahawk chop - there is no such ceremony in Native American history and it makes us appear as savages," said Dan Montour, co-chair of the National Coalition Against Racism in Sports Mascots. "It puts off a lot of the ceremonial songs and makes (Native Americans) appear warlike."
Montour is a Native American student at Ohio State and works with the American Indian Student Services to bring awareness to a growing trend in the sports world to make sports team mascots less insulting to minorities such as Native Americans. Along with the famous tomahawk chop in Atlanta, Montour said Chief Wahoo of the Cleveland Indians is equally distasteful.
"Chief Wahoo is very similar to the Black Sambo," Montour said. "It is the big, goofy nose with a big smile that dehumanizes the race of the people and makes them appear cartoonish."
The trend to make mascots and logos more politically correct was sparked in 1972 when Stanford University switched their team name from the Indians to the Cardinals. Molly Springer, a Native American and the staff member coordinator at the American Indian Student Services, said that the Stanford revolution was a significant start to the cause, but much is yet to be accomplished.
"The Native American population is small and the group gets marginalized," Springer said. "The American public has not been educated on how or why the images are offensive to Native Americans. Mascots in sports are the only mainstream images of Native Americans that Americans see."
Springer said banishing the various mascots of collegiate and professional teams can be avoided through a simple compromise.
"Florida State got permission to use the Seminole image and they give back a small percentage of their apparel revenues to the Seminole nation," Springer said. "That is a good example of how a team can use a name and still have equity."
The fight against racism in sports mascots took a different twist in 2002 when students at Northern Colorado University formed an intramural basketball team and named the team the "Fighting Whites."
"It is kind of funny, I think," said Ruth Lemmon, a teacher from Medina, Ohio. "If it isn't malicious, it is not a problem."
Lemmon, who is white with some Native American ancestry, teaches at a charter school for life skills that is within walking distance from Jacobs Field. Located from a chat room on www.ezboard.com and interviewed through the phone, Lemmon said she grew up in Syracuse, N.Y. and is an avid Syracuse Orange fan. Syracuse is in the midst of a public controversy over the change of their team name from the Orangemen and Orangewomen to just the Orange.
"I don't think it was needed," Lemmon said. "I don't buy it that they changed the name for tradition. I think it was just to be politically correct."
The change at Syracuse University appears to be a way to avoid dilemmas with gender questions, Lemmon said.
The assistant manager at Champs Sports at Columbus City Center agreed with Lemmon that making team mascots more politically correct is not necessary.
"I can't speak on behalf of all Native Americans because you have to look at it as a sports and team issue and not a race issue," said Carl Anderson, a senior in communication as well as the assistant manager at Champs.
Anderson said Champs sells various apparel with the Cleveland Indians logo on it. He said Champs also sells Syracuse merchandise.
"For the most part, everything we get says just Syracuse or Cleveland Indians on it," Anderson said. "We rarely have anything that just says Indians or Orange on it."
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