This is the former CU kicker who now alleges she was raped by a teammate. The CU athletic department seems to have come under scrutiny for using inappropriate recruitment methods (ie, hiring strippers), and a few other women are stating that they, too, were assaulted by football players. Unsurprisingly, the obscene practice of attacking the alleged victim by way of inventing motives for her has begun.
In the midst of all that ugliness, though, one might reflect for a moment on the Coach's observation. Those words, "not only" play an important role in this sentence. If "X" is a standard of measurement, and anything below X means "bad" while anything above X indicates "good," the claim seems to me to mean, "Katie was not only X minus 1, she was X minus 2." Right? Even if his intended meaning was something like "It was a difficult situation because an all-male football team was not used to playing with a woman, and in addition to that difficulty, she wasn't a very talented player," the problem, according to the point's fundamental logic, is still that a woman was involved.
Apparently, being a girl is a step on the way to being a terrible athlete. Odd. I thought we'd moved beyond that. Still need a reason to explain why she seems to have waited so long before making her allegation? Unforgivable.
Posted by dave at February 19, 2004 10:54 AM | TrackBackThought about blogging this story. The recruiting corruption was bad enough. From what I can gather, Katie Hnida's experience at U of New Mexico has been much better, which means that the poor treatment isn't inevitable. If Barnett really wanted the players to treat her with more respect, he could have easily enforced that.
Posted by: chuck at February 19, 2004 11:36 AM | Permalink to CommentThat's good news.
I realize that our teaching jobs are -- for good or ill -- nothing like coaching jobs, and that the analogy has some serious flaws, but I can't help but think that, even if I had a student become a victim of some criminal act, something that my class had some influence on (see, I told you the analogy was implausible), I can say with some certainty that I'd never stand in front of a camera and say, "Not only is that student from Tennessee, he's an idiot."
Posted by: dave at February 19, 2004 2:30 PM | Permalink to CommentI'll extend the teaching scandal analogy (probably to ridiculuos proportions). Let's call it Gradeola, where you as a teacher exchange "A" graeds for high enrollment figures, boosting your profile and popularity on campus.
Because of your generosity, students take to badgering and physically abusing a student who actually does the course work because she is trying to escape her humble roots. She reports this to the news, and you make the comment, "Not only is she poor, but she's also stupid."
That's essentially what Barnett has done. I don't think either o fus would make that comment.
Posted by: chuck at February 20, 2004 12:24 PM | Permalink to Comment