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September 24, 2024 35 mins

Taking a step back from Akilah’s campaign, we spend some time with a local minor league baseball franchise, The Florence Y’All’s, and hear all about how they were able to rebrand their team name from something blah to something more inclusive–which led to a positive impact in every area of their business.

If you have a racist mascot at your high school, or are an alumni of a high school with a racist mascot, and want to share your own experience, please email us at rebelspiritpodcast@gmail.com. We would love to talk to you!

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
My ol has gone on overland.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (00:07):
Ninth Planet, Audiot com we're overlanding, you're over.

Speaker 4 (00:15):
Is there any other areas we should hit up your
old neighborhood?

Speaker 5 (00:20):
Let me think we could go this kind of back
near the mall again, but we could go to the
stadium for the Listener. It's been a heavy couple of episodes.
We've delved into some difficult histories, spoken some hard truths.
We've met a lot of people in our quest to

(00:42):
change my high school team name from the Rebels to
the Biscuits or whatever, and so far we haven't changed anything.
I think it's time to maybe take a little break
and to learn what it's like to really actually change
a team name from blah to amazing. And thankfully we
don't have to go very far.

Speaker 4 (01:00):
Are down there at the kid Zone, and then I'll
look you around and then we'll go upstairs.

Speaker 5 (01:03):
Just off I seventy five. Right here in Florence lies
the home of a small baseball team called the Florence
Yawls and Listener, everything about their stadium is a delay.

Speaker 4 (01:13):
We have two huge inflatable slides that also go up,
but they're away for.

Speaker 5 (01:17):
Anile and you have like these nice like sort of
patio lights. We got a tour of Thomas Moore Stadium,
home to the Florence Yawls and the Thomas Moore University
Saints formerly the Rebels. Remember, Yeah, they have the big
Florence y'all like the waters Tower, the very cool kind
of like Andy Warhol style.

Speaker 4 (01:34):
So that is all BLDG. They painted that. They painted
our spread your wings and fry very KFC. That's why
it's the press bucket and not a press boxes bucket
of chicken. We really wanted to be as Kentucky themed
as possible.

Speaker 5 (01:50):
Today, let's take a break from our quest to change
the Boone County Rebels to something better and instead talk
about how the Florence Freedom became the Florence y'alls, and
how something as small as changing the name of a
baseball team can drive change that reaches far beyond the
stadium walls. Y'all are nothing.

Speaker 4 (02:08):
I love that. And then this one on the other
side says to my old Kentucky home. So it's pointing
towards home, Blake.

Speaker 5 (02:15):
Oh, that's really nice. Am I going to get chucked up? Hey,
let's go out to the ballgame. I was a lady rebel, Like,
what does.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
That even need? The Boone County Rebels will stay the
Boone County Rebels with the image of.

Speaker 5 (02:34):
Right here in black and white and.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
Friends, Biggers is a flag or mascot.

Speaker 6 (02:38):
Anytime you're trying to mess with tradition, you get to
be ready for a serious backlash.

Speaker 5 (02:50):
From Ninth Planet audio. I'm Akuila Hughes and this is
Rebel Spirit Episode four. Y'all are nothing. In the previous episode,
I mentioned that Thomas Moore University here in northern Kentucky
changed from the Rebels to the Saints around that same time.
In two thousand and four, before I graduated and left home,

(03:11):
it was announced that my hometown was getting a new
Frontier League baseball team. They were called the Florence Freedom.
It was in the shadow of nine to eleven, and
a lot of people in the area had served in Iraq.
Freedom made a certain amount of sense, I guess, but
there was never a lot of excitement around the team.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
I don't think he had a purpose to naming it
the Freedom. Yeah, honestly, I think it was just somebody
said that and it was like, Okay, yeah, that works.

Speaker 5 (03:33):
This is j Becker the president and founder of BLDG,
a design firm located just a few minutes north of
Florence in Covington, Kentucky.

Speaker 3 (03:41):
Somebody said what about the Florence Freedom, and he was like,
we need something, Yeah, that's it, let's go with it.

Speaker 5 (03:47):
For years they went with it, and the Freedom was fine.
The logo looked like it was chosen from a book
of generic sports logos. The whole thing felt so phoned
in that I'm literally making myself bored talking about it.
For a design expert like Jay, who also loved sports
as much as he loves northern Kentucky, the generic feel
of the Freedom drove him nuts.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
So I reached out to Clint that owned the team.
If I reached out to him three times, I reached
out to him twenty three times, and he would always say,
we don't need brand, we don't need design. I don't
get it, we don't need it.

Speaker 5 (04:15):
Yeah, like freedom is enough.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
Well then they were sold. Yeah, and we had a
new new sheriff in talent.

Speaker 5 (04:22):
On the surface, there's nothing wrong with Freedom. People came
to the games, they played fine. There was no urgency
to change the name. The logo and team may not
have changed, but ownership changed hands a few times over
the last twenty years. The original owner sold the team
due to a white collar crime scandal, to a new
ownership group led by Clint Brown, who passed away in

(04:42):
twenty eighteen. His widow, Kim Brown, then sold the team
to a new ownership group led by four local businessmen,
and they wanted change.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
The team was doing well, not in the you know,
ticket sales were doing great, but they were stagnant over
a couple of years.

Speaker 5 (05:00):
This is Max Johnson, the y'all's general manager. He's been
with the team for ten years.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
We put it out on Facebook and we just said, hey,
what do you think the new name of the Florence
baseball team should be? And we had hundreds and hundreds
and hundreds of submissions.

Speaker 7 (05:15):
So Florence's Freedom will be no more. No, they're not
leaving town, but the new ownership group wants to give
the team a new look and they're asking for your
help to do this. There's a contest happening right now
to pick the new name of the team. The one
thing that is necessary, Florence still needs to be a
part of it. So these are some of the ideas
that you came up with on our Facebook page. One

(05:36):
suggestion the yellow belly catfish.

Speaker 6 (05:39):
I love it.

Speaker 7 (05:39):
I don't know about that one. Another is the Florence Frontiersman,
and the newsroom's favorite, the Florence Yawlers. But you got
to say it like that, y'allers, so.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
We'll get We took the time to condense the list
down to the you know, the five most common submitted
names from our Facebook and Twitter polls. I don't remember
all five names.

Speaker 5 (06:03):
Quick fun sidebar. The other names considered were the go Getters,
the Fossil Jockeys, the pop Flies, and the no Socks.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
The yaws was obviously one of them that was on there.
The Yawls was the most popular because of the water tower.

Speaker 5 (06:18):
Just to jog your memory, Florence has that giant, red
and white striped water tower that they changed from Florence
Mall to Florence y'all. It's been that way since the
seventies and is definitely the most, possibly the only iconic
thing about Florence, Kentucky. When you look back on history,
something seemed completely obvious, but at the time, renaming the

(06:38):
Florence Freedom to the Florence Yawls was anything but.

Speaker 3 (06:41):
I mean, one of the managing partners looked me square
in the eye and said, just don't tell me you're
going to name my baseball team after a gd I
don't know how sensitive we have to be. Just tell
me you're not going to name my baseball team after
a goddamn water tower. And I said, I'm more than
happy to tell you that, in fact, we're not going
to name your goddamn baseball team after a water tower.

(07:04):
We're going to name it after your Hollywood sign. And
the narrative was flipped.

Speaker 5 (07:07):
It was Jay's insistence on naming the baseball team after
a water tower that changed everything. For a baseball team
so small it's likely you haven't even heard of the
league that they play in, the Frontier League. Even for
new owners excited to bring fresh eyes and excitement to
a team, there's a little incentive from a business standpoint
to change. Rebranding is a huge financial investment, altering signs, merchandise,

(07:31):
marketing materials, as well as the revenue loss from a
diminished brand recognition, and in a small town like Florence,
people have to like it. Rebranding a team is a gamble, absolutely,
but sometimes the gamble is worth it.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
The water Tower is such a staple within our community.
If you google just water tower, it's the first one
that comes up.

Speaker 8 (07:52):
Yeah, so the iconic it is.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
It is the water Tower, And that's kind of the
running joke that we have going on social media. We
throw up other towns water towers and we grade them.
You know, the Freedom name works in Milwaukee, it works
in New York, it works in Chicago, it works in Nebraska,
it works in California. But you couldn't do that with y'alls, right,
you know. It's it's synonymous to the South and us

(08:16):
being the gateway to the South and having you know,
something like the water Tower to you know, back our brand.
It's not our brand, you know, we don't you know,
We're not the water Tower. You know, we're y'all's culture,
and the water Tower just embodies, you know, a certain
percentage of you know what we you know, like to
project because it's Florence, y'all.

Speaker 5 (08:34):
Yeah, the Florence y'alls. To me, it is the freshest,
most authentic, energetic, inclusive baseball team name ever. It's the South,
It's Florence. It's the water Tower, but also bigger than
the water Tower.

Speaker 3 (08:54):
Cincinnati doesn't want us, they call it Kentucky, and Kentucky
doesn't want us, they call it Cincinnati. And so with
the end of the day, that's what y'all's came from.
It's this indigenous culture of northern Kentucky.

Speaker 5 (09:06):
Minor league sports have been going through a renaissance these
last few years. That renaissance has been driven by making
ballparks a fun place to be and rebranding teams into memorable,
often hilarious names. There's the Rocket City trash Pandas in Madison, Alabama,
the Yard Goats with a logo of a goat chewing
a baseball bat from Hartford, Connecticut, or the Savannah Bananas

(09:28):
in Savannah, Georgia, whose slogan is we make baseball Fun.
There are dozens and dozens of minor league teams like
this now, often sporting similar, thick line, cartoonish logos. They're
both unique and cookie cutter at the same time. The
Florence y'alls embraces the irreverence, but the feel is entirely different.
It's a hard balancing act that they pull off flawlessly.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
It's not just a feeling.

Speaker 7 (09:52):
I e.

Speaker 3 (09:53):
Bananas, Yeah, you know, what I mean, we can go
bananas like, there's more to it. And I'm not dissing
on minor league baseball design. It all is very flat.
It all looks the same. It's cartoony. Call it quasi
nineteen ninety four, you know what I mean. And what
we really sold them was it's a heightened brand.

Speaker 5 (10:11):
But change is hard, and even if the brand isn't
all that beloved, like the Freedom, there are still going
to be people that push back against it.

Speaker 3 (10:19):
We still have a few people that walk around the
park in Freedom jerseys. No, I mean, we're cool with this. Yeah,
I've always said I want to do like a Komiskey
Park disco demolition, where we like gather up all the
old freedom merchant, we blow it up in the.

Speaker 5 (10:32):
Outfield where there's change, there's haters. We'll be right back
after a short ad break.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
Literally five hundred negative comments about the word y'all, like
we're not Hillbilities, We're not this, we're not that, And
it was all on Facebook, Go figure. And the interesting
thing was is that we started to look at the
characters that were commenting on y'all and whatnot, and we
realized they weren't from here. They were like just minor
league trolls. We released at like three o'clock. At three

(11:03):
oh five, Barstool came out and said, this is the
greatest name in minor league baseball history, you know, and
it just went from there. You know, I can't remember
the there's a female reporter on ESPN she called. She
was like, I want any and I'll merch you get
or whatever you make. I want it. MLB called. You know,
there was just there was kind of a waterfall of
people that wanted to understand it better. And you know,

(11:27):
you know, thank you Barstool Sports. We'd love to work
with you guys. But there was just so much, so
much driver around the story itself, and then all of
a sudden we started leaking out those secondary marks in
those you know, y'all are nothing, and then it took
a life of its own. But that was the goal,
that was the purpose of the brand, and you know,

(11:48):
to those of you that aren't familiar with branding, it's
the greatest single way of telling stories for business to services, products, whatever.

Speaker 5 (11:56):
It was so reassuring to hear that even when you
have an idea that's as good as y'all, Facebook is
going to light up with naysayers. I don't really know
if the Freedom meant much to the community, but the
fact is that changing it was hard, regardless even if
it was changing to something that spoke directly to Florence's
unique identity and celebrated its local culture. Also, I hate

(12:18):
to say it, but HP death Ridge also helped bring
the Florence Freedom to the area. I don't want to
play armchair psychologists, but I bet it's hard to see
one mascot go much less too. Speaking of mascots, the
Florence Freedom started with Liberty the Eagle and then just
kept going that it's a move I'm learning from Cebrity.

(12:38):
He did, And we've got the Diva of the Diamond Bell,
and then we have Wally the water Tower.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
All three of the mascots here at Florence Freedom, which
is awesome.

Speaker 5 (12:47):
Yes, the Florence Freedom had three mascots. There was Liberty
the Eagle, who was an eagle obviously, and Bell, who
was pink and looked sort of like a duck cross
with a cow but people insisted was a lady eagle.
And Wally the water Tower, yes a water tower, who
was big and bulbous and I think must have been
inflated around the poor person inside him. But listener. While

(13:10):
most everything about the Freedom was forgettable, one thing was not,
because Wally the water Tower walked slowly and carefully in
his big inflated suit so that y'all star could run.

Speaker 8 (13:21):
This year marks the transition of a good friend. We've
grown the love over the past eight years. Our diva,
the Diamond Bell, is retiring. This transition into retirement and
senior care could be one of stress and worry, unless
that transition involves Florence Park Nursing and Rehab Center. But
Florence Park Nursing and Rehab Center, along with their friendly staff,

(13:44):
welcome your loved one in this time of transition, and
who knows, you just may run into our friend Bell
while you're there. Florence Park Nursing and Rehab Center, the
full service nursing home of Bell and the Florence Freedom.

Speaker 5 (13:59):
That, in credit Strange Cross Promotion was to announce in
twenty sixteen. The retirement of Bell an usher in the
new era of y'all Star, a more streamlined, more athletic
water Tower. This is a podcast, so you have to
google to see what he looks like. Stop driving or
pelotoning or folding laundry, which is my preferred podcast activity,
and look up y'all star do it.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
Actually, we introduced y'all Star while we're still the Freedom,
and y'all Star, if you don't know, is our mascot.
He's a baseball player that's you know, his head's the
water Tower and he's our all star on the team.
So you know, y'all Star was actually, you know, a
part of that that Freedom brand originally and then we
just you know, moved him over to the y'all side

(14:42):
of thing. I think I feel like he's he's caught
on a lot more since we've been the y'alls. When
we were the Freedom again, we weren't nationally known. He
wasn't a national independent you know, mascot in a sense,
and you know, you'd walk down the street or you
go to a festival, or you go to a school
and that everyone would be like, hey, peppermintthead, Hey Peppermint

(15:02):
heead and so he was you know his nick I
mean like his you know, his he was Peppermintthead to
you know, ninety percent of the kids because they didn't
know who he was or you know that he was
tied to a baseball team. You know, he had the
jersey on it said Freedom, but you know, you know,
or hay Water Tower Guy, yeah, or you know. So
now I think he's been out in the community more.

(15:24):
You know, we're involved with other mascots. That's something that
we could easily transition over. That was, you know, the
old with the new.

Speaker 5 (15:32):
The old with the new. There were so many strategies
here that we can implement for our Rebel to Biscuits
or whatever journey crowdsourcing to get the community involved the
continuity with y'all Star, But the change wasn't easy for
the franchise itself. The Freedom changed to the Y'alls in
twenty twenty, the year that brought about a little too
much change for most of us and began the cascade

(15:54):
of unprecedented times.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
So we had kind of more of a slower rollout
with the Y'all's brand because of what we had to
do to adapt to play baseball in twenty twenty.

Speaker 5 (16:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
So the first year that the y'alls, you know, the
y'alls were on the field, they were playing against the Freedom.
So we hosted two teams and Lexington hosted two teams
and we played home and homes, so there was that
transition of, you know, the freedom out and the Y'all's in.
And then in twenty twenty one, there was still some
COVID restrictions until about the middle of June where we

(16:25):
had our inaugural season, but we had to completely phased
the freedom out phase. The y'alls one hundred percent in,
changed our team shop around to y'all's one hundred percent,
and then it was just go, go go. As unlucky
as we were, we were lucky at the same time,
and I think that helped us kind of find our footing. Yeah,
you know, a lot of teams when they rebrand, it's

(16:47):
you know, it's boom boom. For us, it was kind
of like, Okay, we got some time to figure this out,
you know, able to figure out our own voice and everything.

Speaker 5 (16:55):
Y'all I bought so much Florence. Y'all merged during that
coalition trip back to Florence. It's a perfect mix of
local pride and baseball culture. They go all in on
the y'all theme shirts that say y'all are nothing or
we ball for y'all. They have the mascot y'all Star
riding a Kentucky Derby style horse Interstate seventy five on
a fleece blanket. I've never felt so spoken to and

(17:17):
proud to be spoken to take my money, Spirit shop.
Everything about the y'all's from the merch, the jerseys the
team wears onto the field, the way they've painted the stadium,
toned down colors of red, white, and blue. It all
has a vintage Americana field. But it doesn't give cracker
barrel racism. It manages to look to the future while
honoring the past.

Speaker 3 (17:36):
If you look at like the uniform system that we built,
you know it was really built off the eighties. Pittsburgh Pirates, Yeah,
very understood, throwback y you know that, you know, Kansas
City Royals, expos baby blues, you know, but things that
were quintessential baseball. We leveraged that past familiarity to bring

(17:58):
it forward. In merch is the second largest piece of
the revenue model. Your business models not just about putting
butts in seats. It's about creating a brand that's so
alluring that we can put it on a T shirt
and everybody wants to buy it.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
Yeah, you know, kind of one of the cool things
to go back and see is you know, through our
online shop, we see you know, we see where we're
shipping everything. You know, we've shipped to New Zealand, we
shipped to Australia, we've shipped to Europe. The reaches that
we have with the new brand that we weren't getting
the traction with. Yeah, when we were the Freedom, people
locally knew who the Freedom were, but not nationally. Now

(18:32):
we've been voted number one by a couple of different organizations.
You know, I'm gonna you know, toot our own hoard
a little bit there. We made the right decision, yeah,
from a business standpoint and from a brand.

Speaker 5 (18:45):
Since the rebrand, the area around the stadium has changed dramatically,
especially with the mall losing appeal amid the general decline
of malls. However, we all know the water Tower has
always been the real focal point of Florence.

Speaker 3 (18:58):
It had actually just been built when I was a kid.

Speaker 5 (19:00):
Yeah, you remember when it said mall. Jay grew up
in Erlinger and now bldg's headquarters are in a three
story walk up storefront in downtown Covington, Kentucky, about twenty
minutes north of Florence.

Speaker 3 (19:11):
So we've been here eleven years, returned twelve in September.
The first floor was at actual gallery in the day.

Speaker 5 (19:18):
Covington is where I lived as a child before we
moved to Florence, and where my mom worked in the
public schools for thirty years. It's much blacker than Florence,
much poorer than Florence, and much much cooler than Florence.

Speaker 3 (19:30):
We have four full time artists on staff, and they
just took it upon themselves too.

Speaker 5 (19:35):
Decorate that that was even true. Back when I was
in high school, friends and I would drive from Florence
to hit the Anger Grill or to watch our cars
roll uphill, no really, at the local landmark called Gravity Hill. Nowadays,
Covington is going through something of a renaissance itself, driven
in part by its riverside location just across the street
from Cincinnati, its beautiful turn of the century architecture, and

(19:59):
its embracive street art and murals which are painted everywhere.
BLDG and Jay have played a part in the revitalization
of Covington and their studio, which feels more like a
chaotic art space than any other creative agency I've ever visited.

Speaker 3 (20:12):
The vintage Sin Sinnat beer brands were bringing back to
life with partnership. You'll see upstairs we do a ton
of screen brings.

Speaker 5 (20:18):
BLDG Studio Space shares a wall with City Hall, which
moved into an abandoned jcpenny listener. The vibe of Covington
is impeccable. The vibe of Florence.

Speaker 3 (20:28):
The vibe of Florence was it was a mall. Like
to a high school kid, it's like what was in Florence.
It was a mall? Yeah, you know, and that was
the catch and the more country yeah, oh totally. The
whole backside of Turfay Park were farms and it was
all It was very rural and the airport had one building,
one building.

Speaker 5 (20:46):
Growing up surrounded by great sports teams, Jay has loved
sports in sports uniforms his whole life.

Speaker 3 (20:52):
You didn't have kids sports team merch. So like my brother,
we take white kids T shirts with markers and make
T shirts because you couldn't buy them, like you couldn't
buy a Red's T shirt for kids in those days.
What really got me excited about sports and everything else
was I loved the Marquette basketball uniforms, the al m
maguire years, and I have every one of the actual

(21:14):
old seventies Marquette uniforms except seventy seventh, the year they
won the championship. And I've looked high and low and
actually found somebody that had one, and we just can't
agree on price. But I will get it. I will
get it.

Speaker 5 (21:28):
You will get it.

Speaker 3 (21:28):
But I was a kid that loved uniforms had we
had UK basketball, we had Louisville basketball, and then when
I was a boy, we had the Kentucky Colonels. They'd
play half their games in Cincinnati.

Speaker 5 (21:38):
Jay is a died in the wool uniform sports geek
and the y'alls isn't the only team they've done branding for.
In fact, and we didn't know this when we walked
in the door. He has been working with the university
that has recently shed its Native American mascot. He can't
name names, and so everything here is intentionally vague, But listener,
what are the odds?

Speaker 3 (21:57):
The school we're working with is very sent to the tribe,
and they're they're they're they're wonderfully brilliant about it. They've
gotten the buy in from the actual tribe. They have
a ongoing relationship on campus. I think they have a
little less than one hundred people that are on scholarship

(22:18):
from there. And what we just saw was an opportunity
to say, hey, you're doing it right. You know, how
can we help you leverage this? And it'll be interesting
to see where it lands in the long run because
there are other factors that we don't control, you know
what I mean. But at the end of the day,
the stuff that makes me really excited is when people
are doing it right, you know, and they're honest and

(22:38):
they're fair.

Speaker 5 (22:39):
I don't know how much you can reveal, but like,
are they changing, are they bringing a mask?

Speaker 3 (22:43):
Ut? We're not there yet, So we're kind of pushing
towards the opportunity to kind of refresh what they have.
Like they did they rebranded and brought a different maskot
forward that didn't really have a past life to it,
and it wasn't introduced in a way that the student
body and the people really understood it. So how do

(23:03):
we create a look and a feel a culture similar
to the alls, but that's not familiar And.

Speaker 5 (23:08):
So you know, you mentioned like the school is doing
a good job. They're being very cooperative too, Like they're
they're invested in doing something good and right. Have you
ever worked with or pitched somewhere where like there was
a denial about it being wrong or reluctance to change
it even as you know the truth of it is revealed,

(23:29):
as you know, receipts are pulled, and they're just saying
it's not offensive. It doesn't matter, like you have experienced,
yes and yes and yes, oh good, it's not just us.
We'll be right back with that drama after a short
ad break.

Speaker 3 (23:48):
It was just it was an old line business that
was reaching for relevance, yeah, you know, and they didn't
want to see the world that they knew that existed
change and I you know, we had to say to
them at the start of the project, why are you here?
Like we're change agents. That's what we do really well.
And if if this isn't what you want, then that's fine.
You you know, we'll give you whatever money you've given

(24:09):
us back and then we can go our separate ways,
you know, in high five when we see each other
at the bars or whatever. And it you know, for us,
the problem kept deepening, and the more we looked at
and said, this is where you change for value, and
this is where you change for a better future relevance.
They had no interest in it, and so I think
we just we had kind of a meeting of the

(24:31):
minds internally here and everybody just agreed that, like, we
can't help them. So there's some people you're not going
to change their minds. And I don't think anything ever
happened with it, Honestly, I think they shut They went
in a shutdown mode almost like.

Speaker 5 (24:43):
This is no exactly all they're saying that we are
bad and our culture is bad and offensive and and
like even if you point to all the other parts
of the culture that they could be proud of, they
didn't care. I'm going to stop things for a minute here.
Remember at the time with the episode where I said
maybe it was time to take a little break from
our pursuit of changing the Boone County Rebels name. I

(25:06):
meant it. This episode has been labeled y'all's episode on
our production sheet since day one. When we showed up
at Jaybecker's door, we had not said a single word
to him about the Boone County Rebels. We were here
to talk about the design work he did for the
y'alls for the episode. You're listening to right now about
the very fun minor league team in my hometown. That
was the entire expectation. Hell in the spirit of radical transparency,

(25:30):
this is the email our producer Dan sent to.

Speaker 1 (25:32):
J Hi Jay. I'm a producer on a new podcast
from Mikhila Hughes and iHeartMedia that deals in part with
sports branding. Aquila is from Florence, and we'd love to
talk with you about the work BLDG has done on
the Florence y'alls, which is just spectacular work. We'll actually
be in Florence and Cincinnati all next week and would
love a chance to maybe come by the office and

(25:52):
talk about the yalls. Thanks so much, Dan.

Speaker 5 (25:58):
That's it. That was the whole pit. And when we
sat down to talk with Jay after the tour of
their space, creaky floors and all, that was what we
expected to talk about. But over the course of the conversation,
it was clear that there was something more here than
just a discussion about a baseball team, and so I
decided to come clean. So I'm going to show our
hand a little bit more. I am a graduate of

(26:19):
Boone County High School class two thousand and five. Go Rebels, but.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
You want to change the rebels. Yeah, I will hope
to change the rebels if you would like that.

Speaker 5 (26:27):
I would love that.

Speaker 3 (26:33):
I love this.

Speaker 5 (26:34):
I don't know if you know the cliff notes about
what they tell about the rebels, but I'll give you
a right.

Speaker 3 (26:38):
I could never figure out how they got away with
still using it.

Speaker 5 (26:41):
Yeah, that's that's my throwout, same same, And so what's
strange is when I was there, there was a sort
of persistent lie that this I told the Rebel without
a Cause story to Jay, including the new findings we have,
of course that this was not possible, but it was
fun to tell another local native this lore and have
him say that I've never.

Speaker 3 (27:01):
Heard that, by the way, and I had a lot of.

Speaker 5 (27:02):
Friends that went right and I only heard it I think.
I mean, it's funny. I'm trying to think back now,
especially since we're here and we're talking to people, But
I'm like, did I hear that in high school? Or
did I hear that from Facebook years later? But I'm like,
I'm pretty sure in high school I was.

Speaker 3 (27:16):
Like Facebook years later to me, right, But it's justification.

Speaker 5 (27:19):
Yeah, totally. There's already so much pushback. We're talking about
people who are a lot older, who are mad because
you're trying.

Speaker 3 (27:26):
To change my childhood belief system.

Speaker 5 (27:29):
Yes exactly, and yeah, like absolutely, so we're invested in
trying to change the mascot to the Biscuits.

Speaker 3 (27:37):
What are your thoughts? Tell me? Why?

Speaker 7 (27:40):
Well?

Speaker 5 (27:40):
I think because why the Biscuits? Why the Biscuits? Of course,
it's very hard to pitch someone on a sports team
rebrand when their literal actual job is doing sports team rebrands.
But I tried. I think because the refrain that I
always hear is this is about our southern heritance. It
was never in the competracive person as a black person.
Bourbon Can Tucky, Oh Biscuits. I know they are like

(28:02):
they identify with It also has the same number of syllables.
Seems like they don't have to change. The cheers very iconic,
and so going with something that's vegetarian. Obviously we would
have some other things. But when you hear Boone County Biscuits,
how does it hit you?

Speaker 7 (28:15):
You know?

Speaker 5 (28:17):
Well, I tried.

Speaker 3 (28:18):
I think if we're a minor league baseball team, it'd
fly fast. Yeah. I think it's probably challenging because I
feel like high schools always want to like wrap their
arms around something that they feel it gives them substance.
Not that I don't think biscuits could. It's just it's well,
it's I would just worry about that. Is it a
little bit too irreverent for it's just a irregular old

(28:41):
high school right, you know what I mean? And it's like,
is it fun and happy and enjoyable and you get
a kick out of saying you're a biscuit?

Speaker 5 (28:47):
Yeah, they're not. The fighting biscuits doesn't really sound same. Okay, Okay,
I get it. Biscuits may be delicious, but maybe they're
a hard cell for a high school sports team.

Speaker 3 (28:58):
What do you put on the side of the football
home it's like just a static biscuit? Or is it
like a biscuit around a bowl of sausage gravy? You know,
it's like, you know, you.

Speaker 5 (29:06):
Know, I always saw a mascot kind of similar to
y'all star, honestly, but a biscuit head and everybody.

Speaker 3 (29:13):
You're going through that, like we would go through it
just so you know. So that's that's that's perfect process format.

Speaker 5 (29:18):
It didn't take long before we weren't just talking about
the pros and cons of biscuits, but talking about organizing
strategies and how to enact real change even in the
face of resistance in our mind, like we would have
to like do focus groups.

Speaker 3 (29:30):
Yes, maybe you don't exactly, but we wouldn't and we
wouldn't even look at it as a focus group. We
look at mors just community engagement, like how do you
engage the community of the school. You know you're going
to get I'll be honest with you on this, You're
going to get a different engagement from the students than
you are from residents of the community planets. There's great opportunity.
You know, even if you got anything like if you
came up with five concepts and said this is our

(29:52):
three or whatever it is, this is what it could
be in biscuits, is one of them, then let them choose.

Speaker 5 (29:56):
It's you know, not lost on me that next year
is I guess there's seven anniversary, Like it's a big
deal for the school. It seems like it could be
a moment of change and moving forward, and like there
are glimmers of it, but we don't have a champion
in the school for this, and I don't know necessarily
that the Board of Education is anti but I know
that they're scared.

Speaker 3 (30:15):
Anytime you start to bring up design, people get really nervous. Yeah, like,
is it going to change us for the worse?

Speaker 5 (30:20):
Right, what I'm hoping to present to the community and
the school board is that we can't be worse than nothing,
which is what we have. The students have a letter
B with the word rebel in it. What I love
about going from freedom, which means something different to liberals
and conservatives to y'all is that y'all is a deliberately
inclusive word. Y'all means all. It's like everyone is welcome.

(30:43):
It spans every sort of demographic and it's used equally
by black and white folks in the South. I hope
for something equally as empowering and forward thinking for my
high school.

Speaker 3 (30:53):
I go get them, Go get them. I think it's
awesome because, like I said, I could never understand how
they've pulled that off. Yeah, and they pulled it off
by apathy, you know, just like way we got rid
of that, and we got rid of the people running
around with those flags and exactly so right.

Speaker 5 (31:09):
And it's like it inherently must be like and you know,
half steps just aren't enough.

Speaker 3 (31:14):
We threw biscuits out as a conversation starter, and now
we can look at this within a continuum of where
do we want to land to tell our story? You
know it because Florence needs a new story.

Speaker 5 (31:27):
Florence needs a new story. When Jay said that, it
put a lot into perspective. In many ways, the story
of Florence is the story of change. I'm not just
talking about now where the demographics of the town have
shifted significantly in the last decade. And I'm not just
talking about changing a word on a water tower from
all to y'all or a baseball team from Freedom to

(31:49):
the Y'all's. Florence, Kentucky has always been changing. Hell, It's
had four different names Crossroads, Madden Toown, Connersville, and Stringtown
before settling on Florence. So why not a new team
name for Boone County High School? Why not a new
story for the kids there today, kids who look so
different than the ones that chose the name Rebels in

(32:09):
nineteen fifty four. I would have loved as a teenager
to be able to have what is.

Speaker 3 (32:13):
Here now, Oh View and me both it was.

Speaker 5 (32:16):
Just nothing, so like, if we could just get a
little bit more of that energy just.

Speaker 3 (32:19):
A little further out. There was something that you wanted
more from this city. You couldn't get it, so you
went to la You know, I first moved to Chicago
because of the same thing. This is a different town now,
it really is. And I'm so excited that you're here
because you're a homie, you know, And it's like, but
you get it, and you understand what the hard mood

(32:40):
to get to where we are is. It's also a
very interesting time in northern Kentucky, to be honest with you,
where more of the fresh new thought is coming to
light versus the old bad habits. Your good luck. And
like I said, I'm happy to help anyway we can help.
We'll definitely be hitting you back to make this ground

(33:00):
central if you want to. I mean, I'd love to
have a lading. Yeah you got it. Well, now you
got it, Yeah, you got it. So I think the
journey of engaging the students in the community get ready. Yeah,
it's a fun ride, you know, not always the easiest,
but it's a fun ride. You'll see that passion start

(33:20):
to come out. Yeah, and that's when you know you're
going in the right direction.

Speaker 5 (33:26):
All right, We're finding our allies. Now we're finding people
willing to speak up, willing to lend a hand. Florence
needs a new story. Boone County High School students need
a new story, and together all of us, we're going
to tell it. Rebel Spirit is a production of Ninth

(33:50):
Planet Audio and association with iHeart Podcasts. Reporting and writing
by me Akila Hughes. I'm also an executive producer and
the host. Produced by Dan Sinker, edited by Josie zahm Our.
Assistant editor is Jennifer Dean. Music composed by Charlie Sun,
Sound design and mixing by Josia zahm Our. Theme song

(34:10):
is All the Things I Couldn't Say, performed by Bussy
and the Bass, courtesy of Arts and Crafts Productions, Inc.
Our production coordinator is Kyle Hinton. Our clearance coordinator is
Anna Sun Andshine. Production accounting by Dilfrid Singh. Additional research
support from Janice Dillard. Executive producers from Ninth Planet Audio
are Elizabeth Bakoot and Jimmy Miller. Special thanks to Jay

(34:32):
Becker and the whole team at BLDG. The Florence y'alls,
Amber Hoffmann, Hillary Delaney and Leslie Chambers. If you have
a racist mascot at your high school, or are an
alumni of a high school with a racist mascot and
want to share your own experience, please email us at
Rebel Spirit podcast at gmail dot com. We would love
to hear from you
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