----- Original Message -----
From: Feder, Scott
Sent: Monday, March 04, 2002 11:32 AM
To: 'Towsontwo@aol.com'; Feder, Scott
Cc: lawfeder@msn.com
Subject: No More Rollin' with Nolan
 


Zero graduation rate is the real cause for outrage 
Posted: Monday March 04, 2002 11:29 AM 
          
    

Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor touches on a Hot Button issue each Monday on CNNSI.com. After you read Phil's take, give us yours. 

We saw the two faces of Arkansas basketball coach Nolan Richardson last week. One was the enraged look of a man who felt he had been wronged. The other was the calm visage of a man denying that he had wronged others. Apparently, injustice only angers Richardson, who was bought out of his contract last week, when he sees himself as the victim of it, not when he's the perpetrator of it. 

By now you've probably seen the footage of Richardson's rambling tirade during a press conference in which he, among other things, complained that the media is prejudiced against him because he's African-American, and declared that he was the best thing the university had going for it. "You can run that on every TV station in the country," he said when he was finished. Richardson was paranoid and pompous at the same time, a despot unraveling before our very eyes. The validity of his claim -- that he's judged more harshly than white coaches -- is open to debate, although anyone who is his school's highest-paid coach at more than $1 million per year, has a free country club membership and the use of an SUV at no charge, as Richardson did, hardly needs the NAACP to come to his aid. 

But a fact that's not in dispute is that none of the African-American athletes who entered Richardson's program from 1990 to '94 has graduated. Not a single one. That staggering truth was brought to light by last week's installment of ESPN's Outside the Lines. According to the program, Arkansas was one of 36 Division I schools with a zero percent graduation rate for African-American players during that span (which is an educational disgrace, but that's a topic for another time), but none of the other 35 had an African-American coach who was casting himself as the victim of racism at the same time. 

It was striking to see how calmly Richardson defended himself against that damning statistic on OTL, compared to the fury with which he railed against the supposed racists who have had the nerve to criticize his coaching and recruiting. His voice was even and measured as he explained that one of the main reasons his players left without diplomas is that so many of them come to school for the sole purpose of (gasp!) improving their basketball skills. Richardson made it sound as if he were the victim yet again, that kids were using his basketball program for their own selfish purposes when he thought they were just as interested in chemistry lab. 

This is hypocrisy at its most blatant. Even if everything Richardson accuses the white media of is true, nothing they have done to him has been as damaging as what his program has done to the young African-American men who have come through it. Don't tell me that he's just a basketball coach, that he can't walk every one of his kids to every one of their classes. Coaches make sure every rep their players do in the weight room is documented. They know when their backup power forward's body fat rises or falls a percentage point. They can pay just as close attention to their players' academic progress, and they can recruit only those players they think have a fighting chance to get a diploma. The coaches who really care do exactly that. 

If African-American athletes and their families can't depend on coaches of the same skin color to think about the kids as students as well as players, who can they depend on? You would think that with Richardson's obvious mistrust of many whites, he wouldn't have to be asked that question. 

I don't want to hear Nolan Richardson complain about some white columnist who says he doesn't recruit as well as he used to. I want to hear him stand up and say that whatever slights he may or may not have received during his tenure at Arkansas don't amount to a hill of beans; that his program's graduation rate for African-American players is obscene, and that as the man, as the black man, who was in charge of that program, he is ashamed of it and embarrassed by it. If he ever brings himself to utter those words, you can run that on every TV station in the country. 

Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor writes about a Hot Button issue every Monday on CNNSI.com. 



-----Original Message----- 
From: Towsontwo@aol.com [<mailto:Towsontwo@aol.com>] 
Sent: Monday, March 04, 2002 10:01 AM 
To: sfeder@czn.com 
Cc: lawfeder@msn.com 
Subject: home again 


Thanks for your answering machine messages yesterday.  We spent an hour on 
the tarmac at SFO for mechnical problems which resulted in missing our Ft. 
Smith flight. Therefore, we did not arrive home until 11 pm. Too late to call. 

Call us at  your leisure tonight. 

Love, MOM