Sunday, December 21, 2008

Charles Barkley is right



Most of you know that I love sports. ESPN and all things sports have become a part of my daily life. Take your pick, I love pro and college sports, it doesn't really matter.


But I want to talk about college sports for a minute, and a dirty little secret in big time college football. For those of you who follow college sports, you will know by now that Auburn University fired their successful football coach, and hired a guy who was about to get fired by a lessor known football school, Iowa State. He was about to be fired because even at a non powerhouse program like Iowa State, a record of 5-19 is not acceptable. Gene Chizik might be a good man and a great motivator, but the truth of the matter is that he did not deserve to get the Auburn job. Turner Gill did.

Why Turner Gill? Well, Turner Gill is African American and....Oh here we go, of course, here comes the give it to the black guy speech. No, not quite, this time it's a give it to the best guy who happens to be black, speech. And if I did give that speech, could you think of a better group of people to give it to than the nation's top college Athletic Directors? Consider: Twenty five percent of the assistance in major college football are African American; fifty percent of the players are African American; yet only three percent of the coaches are black. That grades an "F" from the Black Coaches Association. Wouldn't it have been nice if a big time program like Auburn had stepped up to the plate and hired a qualified person of color? Charles was right about his Alma Mater this time. "It’s a comment on Auburn. It’s a comment on the state of Alabama, I just feel sadness because you know what people think of the South and Alabama, things like that. And you just hope that at some point that people are going to say we’re going to change this. Or it’s just going to stay status quo...” ...I look at things from a commonsense standpoint, how do you interview Turner Gill and pick Gene Chizik over Turner Gill?"

And now the buzz is that one reason Gill was turned down, wasn't because he is black, but because his wife is white. Yep, seems jungle fever doesn't play too well at those cocktail parties with those good ole boy boosters. Oh, and we might want to add Florida assistant, Charlie Strong, to that mix. Yep, seems the white wife scuttled his chances as well. Honey I am going on a job interview. Hey, check out this new tanning bed I got you. Oh, and look at this nice wig.

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