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March 19, 2004
Playing the Race Card
Former U of A Coach Nolan Richardson is attempting to play the race card again in his suit against the university.
Nolan Richardson told an attorney for the Arkansas Razorback Foundation that he felt discriminated against as University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, basketball coach largely because he was sent to speaking engagements around the state where there often were no other black people.
Ummm....duh. Since Arkansas' population is only 16% black, that's like, you know, inevitable.
Asked which speaking engagements bothered him, Richardson at first said, "I don’t recall."
Then, according to the transcript, he named engagements in Texarkana and Mountain Home. "And you are saying that they should not have sent you to those areas of the state where they knew there was not a black population sufficient to make certain that there would be blacks in the audience — that they shouldn’t have sent you there?" Kaplan asked. "They didn’t have to," Richardson replied. "They could have sent me to places that there were more blacks involved." He named Little Rock, Tulsa and Dallas, then admitted that he was sent to those places too but "very rarely." "Well," Kaplan inquired, "aren’t there basketball fans, Razorback basketball fans, in Texarkana or Mountain Home?" "Yes, there is," Richardson said. "Well, you don’t think that they want to hear from the coach?" "I’m sure they do." "So," Kaplan asked, "what’s the problem? I mean, they want to hear from the coach. You’re the coach."
Richardson responded again that "the foundation that I worked for sent me to places that I was the only black face in the audience."
To be fair, if I was black, I'd be more than a bit nervous about speaking to a group in Mtn. Home. But a) as the coach, that's part of his job, and b) that's not why he was let go.
In Arkansas, the b-ball cultists don't give a rat's ass if you're black, brown or pee-purple polka-dotted as long as you win. If you don't win, you're outta here. (See, e.g., the athletic director's fair-haired boy, Eddie Sutton). And you, Coach Richardson, went from winning the NCAA championship in 1994 to having a team that couldn't beat a high school AAU team.
So when you popped up a press conference complaining about how you were being mistreated and how you wished they'd buy out your contract....they saw their chance and took it.
But it wasn't because of the color of your skin.
It was your win/loss record.
Posted by Rita at March 19, 2004 07:41 AM
Comments
It's bad enough to always lead with it whenever it turns up in your hand, but all too often it is clearly dealt off the bottom of the deck.
Posted by: triticale at March 20, 2004 04:57 AM
I got the impression he was actually fired because he was complaining about racism -- or at least racial imbalance/mistreatment? At least he was speaking up about this stuff before he was fired.
Not to say that his complaints are necessarily justified, but it's not like he just started making this stuff up after he was fired.
From what I've read about the situation, Nolan's greatest offense wasn't losing games -- it was suggesting there might be racism at the university. People don't like him making that suggestion. Makes 'em mad.
Posted by: Aaron at March 20, 2004 10:27 AM
Actually there'd been a lot of talk about getting rid of him well before the press conference, for several reasons. All of which had to do with his coaching & recruiting decisions, not his race.
And I can understand why his statements pissed off the university folks. Whatever their other faults (and they have plenty of them), the university has worked hard to attract more blacks and other minorities to the campus.
Most of what really happened has only been reported in the local news, so I can see how you'd have the impression that he was fired for complaining of racism. But that isn't what happened.
Posted by: Rita at March 20, 2004 11:22 AM