I wont link his latest work. Instead, I’ll link a post containing his work. But here’s the relevant quotation:
Notre Dame fans essentially said, after Willingham left their campus, that if having an African-American head coach means having to swallow a few losing seasons now and then, it’s not worth hiring another African-American coach at any point in the future, near or distant.
That, friends, appears to be a charge of racism. I’m no lawyer (though some of the Loyal Sons happen to be lawyers). What say you, fans of Notre Dame (particularly all you lawyers)? Can we sue?
Matt Zemek is an idiot we’ve ripped a number of times for writing dumb things poorly, but this time I think he’s crossed the line from dumb to defamatory.
Latest posts by domer.mq (see all)
- HLS Tweets for the Week of 2009-11-15 - November 15, 2009
- HLS Tweets for the Week of 2009-11-08 - November 8, 2009
- HLS Tweets for the Week of 2009-11-01 - November 1, 2009
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.
Mark,
While my post was mostly in jest, I do think if, say, a ND Booster Club or Alumni Association wanted to make a claim here, they could. It might be frivolous, but it might also be worth making Matt sweat. Your second point doesn’t really make any sense as its taking a practical matter of charges of racism and jumping to an impractical extreme to make a defense.
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.
In addition to the above noted absurdness of the black coach statement, Matt apparently doesn’t know that the ND football team’s average GPA has improved under Charlie, leading one to believe that Charlie actually cares more about and/or focuses more on cultivating the student part of the “student-athlete” than Ty did.
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.
BK,
Thanks for throwing a snot rocket into my oatmeal.
At the very least, can I get him fired?
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?
I’m not sure what they hell his point is–I don’t think he probably does either. But he did say this:
“In the wake of Willingham’s severance from Notre Dame, the school had to face charges of racism that, while understandable on a primal emotional level, were ultimately unfounded. Notre Dame didn’t care one whit about Willingham’s skin color; the school wanted its coach to win many more football games than he did. The Irish made a simple business decision, nothing more.”
End of story–that’s all that needs to be said. Whether you’re a player or a coach, regardless of race, produce consistent, positive results on the field or take a seat on the bench.
The reason that ND didn’t give Ty as long as Faust or Davie was because of Faust and Davie and nothing else. We’ve seen that movie before, we know how it ends. How many times should the administration be expected to make the same mistake? Ty wasn’t hired to “fix the program” or fix the “school’s reputation” that’s garbage. He’s was hired to win a high percentage of his games and run a clean program. He did the later, but not the former. It’s not unreasonable to expect a coach to do both.
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, at best you were being disingenuous with that quote. You took the words on 1 ND “fan,” who, for all we know, couldn’t be further from an actual fan of ND than I am a fan of your work, and applied it to “Notre Dame fans.”
You have the sophomoric understanding of the power of words that allows you to both abuse those words and their context when it suits you and yet lack a full grasp of their depth, power, or meaning whether it suits you or not. You’re like a bad mechanic. Anybody can tighten a few loose screws, but only competent mechanics understand how everything interplays. You’re such a bad “mechanic,” you don’t even get that analogy.
Further, to think your piece on the ND/NBC contract has been vindicated by the nation’s economic crisis is laughable and shows the same degree of understanding of the economy as a 14 year old boy arguing in class that “they should just print more money,” in order to fix everything.
I’d urge you to try harder, but that might cause you to work up an appetite, and you’ve already created too much of a burden on this planet.
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
Zemek, you just compared yourself to Jesus. And you’re asking someone else to get some perspective? Lord. Help. You. And. Your. Misguided. Brain?
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, first of all, you coming to a weblog to defend yourself speaks more about you than just your article. The aforementioned simile to Jesus is ridiculous, and the fact that you claim that the rest of us fans, while irate at the performance of Willy, share in the belief that “well if THATS what we can expect from a black, coach, why bother?” is insulting to say the least. How dare you claim to speak for me or any other Notre Dame fan. Apparently, it is only YOU who sees black and white in this, not us. Why else would you go to the lengths to defend your ignorance and intolerance?
Matt,
Being a good Catholic, you know that Jesus has a lot going for him. For example, he’s God. For another, being God, he’s omniscient. For another example, he doesn’t Google his name so he can stroke his ego over people who are pissed that he called them a bunch of racists.
Maybe you could learn a thing or two from Jesus.
domer, really? I would like to think that God does Google. I mean why not enjoy some of the better parts of what he has created?
kudos though on successfully tearing down one of those cfn.com hacks. well done
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, you defended the statement “Notre Dame fanS essentially said,” by claiming that “That quote came from a DIRECT STATEMENT made to me by A Notre Dame fan” thereby smearing ND nation based on some alleged person. then you muddied it with a bunch of bullshit like “Several dozens of other ND fans never were quite so direct, but strongly HINTED at a similar view.” How did they exactly ‘hint’ that “if having an African-American head coach means having to swallow a few losing seasons now and then, it’s not worth hiring another African-American coach at any point in the future, near or distant”? That’s a pretty specific sentiment to just ‘hint’ at isn’t it? Wouldn’t you have to more or less bullshit your way into that conclusion? In my humble opinion, you’re full of shit, and you’re continuing to hurt innocent fans baselessly so fuck you asshole!
Matt,
What you’ve always failed to understand is that Notre Dame never hired “an African-American coach.”
Notre Dame hired a football coach.
It’s amazing to me that so many ND fans and alumni never thought twice about Willingham being black, and yet those who deem themselves to be making “the more moral” statements are so hell bent on screaming from upon their mount, “he’s black! HE’S BLACK!”
We don’t care.
qb, wow , maybe a switch to decaf is in order.
Matt, no where in the first paragraph that last reply is there a coherent thought.
ND fired a bad HC who happens to be black; no more, no less.
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.
Matt,
I’m giving up on you the way middle school algebra teachers give up on the kid who can’t quite get Pythagoras on his 3rd attempt at the class.
You don’t understand ND. You never will. It’s why you’re such a xenophobe about it. Which is funny because that’s where racism is born too. I’m not saying you’re a dumb hick who can’t fathom the way other people’s minds work on a much different level from yours, but I am saying you’re just like a dumb hick who can’t fathom it.
The problem with you’re microscope is you’re too busy pointing it in the wrong direction to actually find anything that could do society any good. It wouldn’t surprise me if you once heard about how they were closing up bath houses in San Francisco to “stop the spread of AIDS” and thought, “that’s sure to work.”
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.
Also, comparing the Willingham hiring to the Jackie Robinson signing is dopey. Willingham didn’t tear down any walls, nor did he have to deal with racial death threats just for doing his job.
Not to mention the fact that it took one of the best players in baseball to finally break that color barrier. You think the Dodgers wouldn’t have cut Jackie if he hit .220?
Matt,
I’ve got a fun assignment for ya: Now that we can sort of “look back” on Ty Willingham’s career, how about you do a piece on all the African American coaches from his “tree.” You know, the ones he hired and helped bring up through the ranks. I’d love to hear all about the various minority coordinators he hired and helped train so they’d be qualified for HC jobs that open up. Maybe then you can do a piece on why, despite all of Ty’s mentoring, those minority coordinators didn’t get a HC job. Must be very frustrating for Ty and his minority coordinators, eh? No doubt, Ty having a full appreciation for that sort of struggle, has done his best to help.
I’m sure with some quality research, you could hit a home run. Sure, it wouldn’t be as easy as blindly throwing around charges of racism at a large group of people, but no doubt it’ll be worth it.