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?

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.

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.”

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, 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.

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.

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.

kudos though on successfully tearing down one of those cfn.com hacks. well done