Can Notre Dame Fans Sue Matt Zemek for Libel?

Mark Vandewalle

Two points: 1)The claim was made against a fanbase, not an institution. Defamation of fanbases happens constantly. Nothing can come of this. 2)The statement is essentially true but I don’t think apologies are in order. He is pushing buttons that are best ignored. If it means having losing seasons, the fans don’t want a black man as head coach. Neither would they want an Irish man as head coach. Nor would they want the Dali Lama if he couldn’t win. Ignore these yokels and let the TW chapter finally RIP.

Bad Kermit

There’s no injury, there’s no real “target,” and it’s probably a statement of opinion rather than fact, so they don’t even have a frivolous claim.

aaronb

I live in Tennessee. Phil Fulmer is getting WAY more flack than Ty ever received. At the end of the day production is what really matters to fans.

The Biscuit

Zemek’s lame article was better than a number of other lame articles on the subject. There are many others I’d sue first – can we sue UM (sucks) for Falsification of Identity as they pretend to be 1) an academic institutions and 2) a football program?

Matt Zemek

For the record, I wrote that little excerpt in a spirit of generosity, because it’s EXACTLY what at least one Notre Dame fan DID write in an e-mail sent to me just after Willingham left Notre Dame, and I wrote a column about it.

That quote came from a DIRECT STATEMENT made to me by a Notre Dame fan.

If anything, I softened the blow.

By the way, you excoriated me by saying that I knew nothing about our nation’s economic system back in June, when I criticized Notre Dame for giving away deals that were not based on raw performance-based merits.

In the midst of our economy’s complete meltdown, maybe I actually knew what I was talking about, although I’m willing to admit that I need to focus on other schools’ problems as much as I focus on Notre Dame.

The school is a GREAT school doing GREAT things.

The football program makes me embarrassed to be a Catholic.

That’s why I’ve not written very many stories about Notre Dame this season. It’s the one school where being a football writer brings a lot of intense personal conflicts into the equation.

This Ty Willingham story was written because Ty Willingham is and has been a consequential figure–albeit not for all the right reasons–in college football over the past decade. I had to bring Notre Dame into the equation, and sure enough, the emotions of late 2004 are all surfacing again.

To repeat, though, the quote you excerpted from my story is based on the exact words of an e-mail from a Notre Dame fan who lobbed that very statement in my direction. Several dozens of other ND fans never were quite so direct, but strongly hinted at a similar view.

To deny the existence of this general animus is to be purposefully ignorant.

PS–Just to prove that I did, on this particular occasion (I plead guilty to some past excesses), restrain myself, I never went into any of the details of Notre Dame’s treatment of Charlie Weis, compared to Willingham. I could have done so to lay it on thick. But I was a good little boy.

PPS–I never knew an economic meltdown, which exposed our entire national way of doing business, could feel so redemptive on so many levels.

We now return to our regularly scheduled, vigorous, and unlikely-to-cease disagreements.

Your favorite hypocrite and progressive Catholic Vatican 3-style traitor,

Matt Zemek
CFN

Matt Zemek

Domer MQ:

So you’re saying that you and legions of other ND fans were not emotionally exhausted at the end of the Willingham era?

You’re saying that you were not tired of hearing endless talk about race, which the university plainly and undeniably brought upon itself by taking the step of hiring an African-American head coach, without being fully mindful of the care it needed to exercise after having done so?

Denial, sir, is not a river in Egypt.

I’m trying my hardest, and always have. Doesn’t mean I’m always right–far from it–but I’ve never been as sincere as I am when I criticize Notre Dame football. As a Catholic, it’s a point of conscience for me. No critique of Notre Dame’s institutional actions, and I will feel that I’m putting my faith under a lamp shade.

The light needs to shine… even if that means offending people.

There was this Jesus guy… he said plenty of unpopular things in his day, knowing he’d receive a lot of fierce blowback.

You and I are destined to strongly disagree for all eternity. That’s not a sin on your part–not at all. I strongly believe that God will fully embrace you with his unconditional love in heaven, and then we’ll regard every ND-centered conflict as trivial.

In the meantime, though, get some perspective.

-Matt Z

Tracer Bullet

Wow, a guy comparing himself to Jesus is telling someone else to get perspective. Fascinating.

I’m not sure if the idea that ND should accept losing from a black coach offends me more as an African-American or as a Notre Dame fan. As much as I’d love to see, say, Joker Phillips in blue and gold, I want this team to win first. That is, after all, the head coach’s primary job. Losing under a black coach may feel good in some twisted way, but until they start awarding national championships for moral courage, I’ll take my victories the traditional way, thanks, the race of the coach be damned.

Matt Zemek

Okay, okay. I hope you enjoyed the laughs about Jesus.

You do realize, of course, that the point of the Jesus reference was to make a linkage between dominant popular opinion and the truth/morality of a given statement, position, or action. The answer, of course, is that no such linkage exists–the most unpopular statements and actions are often (though hardly always) the more moral ones. At a Catholic school such as Notre Dame, I had thought that such a reference to Jesus would be understood in its proper place and context……..

An ironic subtext in light of all this is that Willingham never tried to make friends or influence people in and around Notre Dame. By doing virtually nothing to make people happy off the field, Willingham didn’t create any political allies at the school. Admittedly, then, Willingham was just as politically dumb as the school was. Willingham was stupid for not trying to build bridges, the school was stupid in its spectacular ignorance of the massive social, economic and political consequences of hiring an African-American coach.

Matt Zemek

Branch Rickey, General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, didn’t merely sign a baseball player in the mid-1940s, did he?

To claim that “oh, this was just your garden-variety coaching hire under normal circumstances, with no PR- or image-based considerations whatsoever (and no extra moral responsibility to carefully treat Ty Willingham as a result)”, is a plainly ignorant statement.

Not ignorant in any hateful sense, of course.

Just ignorant in a real-world sense–ignorant of billy-basic workplace politics and the modern media microscope which will always have its eye out for racial disparities in terms of employee treatment and like issues.

Bad Kermit

It’s nice to see that Matt admitted that the people who made race an issue during the Willingham hiring was the media.

There are tons of great stories out there that we’ll never hear because articles about made-up “racism” are a lot easier to write, and more people will read them. I’m not indicting Matt for that fact, but rather the nature of his business as a whole. Matt has pressure to write a column that people read. Let’s say he can write about a baseball player walking a special needs kid home after a ballgame, or he can accuse the most popular college football program in America of racism. If he likes his job, I guess he’d be a fool to pick the former story, but at least people would respect him for it.