At halftime of Saturday’s Illinois-Western Illinois football game, Dan Maloney will watch from his seat in the stands as the band performs without any mascot. He doesn’t think he will cry, but he knows it will be tough.

Maloney was Chief Illiniwek, back when there was a Chief Illiniwek. He was the last student to do the high kicks and split jumps in the regalia sold to the University by a Sioux chief in 1982.

After 81 years as our mascot, the University let Illiniwek go with an undemocratic decision in February. The Chief, our Chief, who danced for my parents in the ’70s and my grandparents in the ’40s, who danced for our peers since Lester Leutwiler first assumed the persona three generations ago in 1926, was euthanized by his caretakers. He is another Native American destroyed by white people, only this time by guilt instead of greed.

Student portrayers of the Chief take two-year terms. Maloney only got one year of his. He will wear shoes to the game Saturday, but he should be running barefoot on the field, the fake grass of the turf tickling at his feet and the hot rubber pellets of fake dirt burning them. When the weather gets cold, he’s not supposed to be able to feel his feet for the freeze, like the November game in 2005 when the ground was ice and 10 minutes of a hot water soak barely helped.

The Anti-Chiefs didn’t understand or care how much love and goodwill the Chief fostered in his supporters. The dance, designed to pump up a home crowd and not to precisely mirror a genuine Native American performance, was inauthentic. The costume, provided to the school by Frank Fools Crow to be used in the halftime routine, engendered a negative stereotype. All their noise, all the controversy they stirred up, couldn’t go away without this one sacrifice. They got Illiniwek’s scalp.

Maloney and Assistant Chief Logan Ponce (who performed at athletic events that drew smaller crowds) devoted themselves to Illiniwek at the highest level. They were the survivors of an intensive 8-week tryout from February to April in 2006. Fifteen devotees made it through to perform the dance to a panel of former Chiefs and Department of Intercollegiate Athletics officials, and four made the cut to perform again and handle a round of interviews before the stone-faced panel. This was serious business.

It was up to Maloney to end the tradition at the last men’s home basketball game, Feb. 21 against Michigan. He did interviews for media outlets (including ESPN, Fox News and the New York Times) before that last dance, then put on the costume and the face paint one last time.

He danced so hard that night, he almost fell twice. On his way out of Assembly Hall, he doubled back to midcourt and raised his arms toward each side of the court to thundering applause and cheers. Then he headed off the court and down a ramp, where a video camera captured his final moments. He breathed hard through his nose – the Chief cannot open his mouth – which made it look like he was choking back tears. His blue-grey eyes, intense and deep even without the costume and the emotion of the moment, stared daggers straight ahead. Then the monitor went out and the Chief was gone.

Like a lot of students, I was steaming about the decision. This University was going to have to pry the Chief from my cold, dead hands, I decided, as I went out and bought half a dozen Chief T-shirts, two hoodies, four baseball caps, three tumblers, a lapel pin, a keychain, two pennants, a bedspread and two throw pillows. (Maloney only has a couple of T-shirts, one hoodie, one baseball cap, a fleece blanket, three neckties, a statuette and a flag.) Try and take the Chief away from me, will they? I’d like to see them try.

But being mad at the school is a fool’s errand. I’m unhappy with the result, but if I didn’t love the University so much in the first place, I never would have cared about Illiniwek. Despite the destruction of our cherished mascot, I still fiercely love my school.

Maloney does, too. “I’m proud to have two (undergraduate) degrees from here and I’m proud I’m getting a (graduate degree) in May,” he said. “I’m still proud to be a student here.”