What's the deal with all of the articles about Oklahoma head baseball coach Larry Cochell not including the facts surrounding his resignation? Cochell resigned "two days after reports surfaced of alleged racial remarks he made during two off-camera interviews to a sports network. The longtime coach submitted a letter of resignation to president David Boren, who had met hours before with athletic director Joe Castiglione and members of the university's black community on the matter." What the heck is a "racial remark," and why won't any news organizations report what those remarks were?
Apparently Cochell used "racial epithets" as he praised a black ballplayer on his team. I'm guessing he said something like "that nigger is one helluva ballplayer." But I don't actually know what he said, because the friggin' media won't tell me. Whatever happened to "We report, you decide"? Is the American public really so hyper-sensitive that we can no longer be given news facts because somebody might be "offended" and sue the reporting news agency?
[Mr. Wilson tries one more time to find an article that tells the facts.]
Aha! I finally found an article that describes what happened. There were two incidents. In one, after Cochell had praised freshman Joe Dunigan for staying in school, Cochell said to play-by-play announcer Gary Thorne, "There's no n[igger] in him."
In the second, Cochell said to color commentator Kyle Peterson, "Dunigan is a good black kid."
Maybe I'm not a sensitive enough guy, but neither of those statements strikes me as "unreportable" by the major media.
I'm also a little torn about the end result of this situation. Cochell was clearly a condescending son of a bitch in his remarks, but were his remarks worthy of getting him fired? (Yeah, he resigned, but let's not pretend that resigning was his idea.) Whatever happened to "sensitivity training" and other P.C. solutions to the problem? I mean, the guy was very well respected, and he frequently interacted with black student athletes over the years. If he were truly a racist bastard wouldn't he have been outed long ago?
Was he stupid? Yep. Careless in his word choice? Definitely. Racist? I'm not going to say no. I don't know the guy and I sure as heck ain't going to defend the character of a man I know so little about. But unless this guy has some major skeletons in his closet, I just find the "racist" label too harsh at this point.
Anybody out there know more about this guy or about the two situations that ultimately got him canned?
Comments
See what your friends and neighbors have to say about this.
God what an idiot…
Share your thoughts with the community.
Commenting is no longer permitted on this post.