Ball State, the school formerly known only as David Letterman's alma mater, is dealing with a little NCAA scrutiny right now. Head Coach Ronny Thompson (son of John Thompson II (the Ewing one)) "resigned" on July 13, two days after the NCAA informed the school that an investigation had uncovered rules violations, specifically that Thompson and his staff attended "voluntary" (haha) offseason workouts.
Ball State University is located in Muncie, IN, only 65 miles from the NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis. It's probably not the best place for the coach to don his best Bobby Valentine groucho mask and "cheer" encouraging words like "flex cut 34" from the corner of the gym during voluntary workouts.
blahblahblJohn Thompson and JTIII try to explain to Ronny that Georgetown and
Here are the facts you need to know about Ball State University. According to Peterson's, Ball State is 90% white and 7% black. The mid-50 percentile SAT score is 930-1130, lower than that of Towson University (which is a fine school ladies of Towson, a damn fine school). Add that Indiana was (and is) one of the hotbeds of Ku Klux Klan activities, and you can imagine that Ronny might be telling the truth. (Get your official KKK robes HERE, [NOT A GOOD LINK FOR WORK] but Indiana residents have to add 5% sales tax.)
Jason Whitlock, Kansas City Star sports columnist, is a Ball State alumnus and former student athlete. We know from his ESPN/Scoop Jackson "incident" that he is no stranger to blogs. We also know from his strong comments about the Don Imus/Rutgers incident that Whitlock, an African-American, is not one to shy from racial controversy. It will be interesting to see if he experienced the same bigotry alleged by Coach Thompson.
3 Responses:
Screw Whitlock, I want to hear what The Nation of Islam Sports Blog has to say about this outrage!
The safe money is on Ronny and his staff having planted the racist notes in order to set up the "hostile work environment" escape clause. Why escape? Because Ronny suddenly realized that the athletic department wasn't going to look the other way with his staff's rules violations.
Ronny also created an antagonistic relationship with nearly everyone at the school. Because he's black? No. Ball State LOVED Ray McCallum, the former coach, and a black man. It's not a race thing.
The antagonistic atmospher came from Ronny wanting everyone to treat basketball like THE program, even though they were TERRIBLE this year and showed no noticeable improvement under his "tutelage."
I don't think the safe money is ever on a conspiracy which requires racist notes to be planted within two days of a horrible basketball program being put on notice that they may face sanctions someday, eventually.
Plus, without seeing his contract, how do you know that he had such a clause? Isn't college coaching by definition a "hostile work environment"?
Isn't your mention of a former black coach the equivalent of citing your "black friend"? If they loved him so much, why isn't he still coach? Plus, you forgot that Tim Buckley came between McCallum and Thompson. Buckley was white as virgin snow.
So he wanted basketball to be THE program. I don't recall Ball State football being anything. Last MAC championship was in 1996 and the last D-1 bowl victory was in never. Blaine Bishop and Bernie Parmalee were good, but they never had the influence of a Bonzi Wells.
Plus, I don't mean to use foul language, but YOU ARE IN FUCKING INDIANA. Ball State basketball has 7 NCAA appearances (compare to 3 bowl games, all lost), 7 MAC Tourney championships and 7 MAC regular season championships. Plus, Ball State won 3 of those 10 tourney games, which isn't bad for the MAC.
Post a Comment