Jason Whitlock is back

[rich76]

he is the originator of "Real Talk" a number of years ago....and he's back to discuss some of the issues in sports that (today) affect Black folks.....it's a sort of loong read, but worth it. He usually "tells it like it is"

We learned Wednesday that one of Nelson Womandela's Rutgers basketball players — center Kia Vaughn — has filed a lawsuit against Imus for defamation of character.

Yes, it seems that C. Vivian Womandela's players learned the exact lesson she taught throughout the Imus fiasco: play the victim for all the money and fame that it's worth and ignore the price others may pay for your selfishness.

Again, let me restate for the record my opinion on the Imus fiasco. Don Imus was wrong. He needed to be punished with a suspension. Sharpton, Jackson and Stringer milked Imus' mistake for personal gain, and at the end of the day put the Rutgers' players in harm's way (opposing fan backlash, death threats) over a minor incident.


Congratulations, C. Vivian Stringer .... your players have learned a lesson from their fearless leader.

Kia Vaughn is now following the example of her fearle$$ leaders. She wants her piece of the pie. She doesn't care that her lawsuit will undermine the credibility of her former teammates and make the Rutgers women look like money-grubbing, attention-starved opportunists. Vaughn watched Womandela cash in with a book deal and new contract, so why shouldn't at least one of the allegedly highly offended players get in on the score?

Even though hardly anyone in America knows who she is — and those who do, only know her as one of the "classy and intelligent" Rutgers players — Imus' stupid words supposedly damaged Vaughn's character and reputation to the extent that she needed to file a lawsuit to recover her good name.

What are we teaching our young people?

Last week I spent six hours in a law office with Big John Thompson, John Thompson III, Ronny Thompson and a lawyer. They tried in vain to convince me that Ronny Thompson, Big John's youngest son, quit as Ball State's basketball coach after 15 months because he worked in a racially hostile environment. They wanted me to write the story that they later got my friend Mike Wilbon to pen in Tuesday's Washington Post.

Wilbon is one of the most skilled sports journalists in America. He's extremely fair-minded. And I have a great deal of respect for him as a friend and a man. However, his column on Ronny Thompson was irresponsible, filled with blatant inaccuracies told to him by Thompson and an embarrassment to The Post. The column painted Muncie, Ind. and Ball State as a hotbed of seething racial animosity where no black coach could hope to survive.

During my meeting last week with the Thompsons, guess who Ronny referenced several times as a confidant? Vivian Stringer.

Hey, she probably had nothing to do with what the Thompsons are doing. But it's difficult for me to believe that her Imus payday didn't in some way inspire Ronny to quit, play the victim and plot a lawsuit.

Now, I'm a former Ball State football player and a 1990 graduate of the school. I have strong ties to the university and athletic department. I've known Big John Thompson for 15 years. I talked with Ronny several times throughout his brief tenure.

He did not in any way fail at Ball State, post a school-record 22 losses and get accused of a couple of NCAA infractions because he worked in a racially hostile environment.

He bombed because he was too immature, too soft and too arrogant to deal with working in a poorly run, dysfunctional athletic department. My alma mater hired a horrible athletic director, Tom Collins, shortly before Thompson was hired as basketball coach. Collins has no leadership skills. People within his own department don't respect him or like him. I've met the man. He's unqualified for his job.

The turmoil within the athletic department and Thompson's total lack of people skills combined to throw the basketball program into chaos. Thompson has claimed that the rampant stories about his poor relationships with longtime boosters, trainers, secretaries and other Ball State coaches are all exaggerated, distorted or a byproduct of racism. It's just not true.

My first meeting with Ronny Thompson was terrible. He was aloof and short with me and three of my former teammates — all black — inside a restaurant on campus. Two weeks later, Thompson saw me filling in for Wilbon on Pardon The Interruption and he called me enthusiastically, kissing my rear end and asking me to wear a Ball State basketball jersey the next time I was on PTI. I accepted his calls and forged a bit of a relationship solely out of respect to his father and my love of Ball State.

During my meeting with the Thompsons, they acknowledged that Ronny had unconditional support from the school president and athletic director. I know this is true because Ronny's failure and the subsequent controversy have raised considerable questions about their own job security. They needed Ronny to stay and succeed, and they were committed to working through and eliminating the trust issues and alleged racial problems that were hurting Ronny.

They never got a chance to do any of that because, before Ronny quit, he isolated himself from everyone except his coaching staff, secretly tape recorded at least one assistant athletic director and sent a series of carefully-worded emails to the school president that screamed he was preparing a lawsuit.

Try winning a national championship before going Nolan Richardson on a school that hired you based solely on your last name. This is a spoiled, pampered kid of privilege who ran to daddy as soon as things got a little tough.

Did he experience some racial tension at Ball State? Yes, probably. You can find it anywhere in America where the races work together. Any black man in a position of authority is going to have to weather a certain amount of racial backlash. You think Tubby Smith didn't have thick skin at Kentucky? As a sports columnist and media personality, do you think I (or Wilbon) haven't endured some vicious name-calling, threats and petty office politics?

Thompson's whining about racist notes left under a door and an associate athletic director allegedly making disparaging comments about Thompson and his staff sounds like a kid who wanted to take his ball and go home. The whining also sounds a bit hypocritical.

"He told us not to trust in (white people) and that they weren't trying to help us," said Peyton Stovall, Ball State's second-leading scorer. "He told us that on many different occasions. I don't know if he had a reason why, but it just came out. We'd be in a meeting or at his house or something and it would just basically come out of nowhere. I thought he had prejudged everybody before he got there."

Thompson, according to Stovall, was also pretty liberal with the use of the N-word with his team. Thompson's players were all black. He had one white assistant coach.

"Practice, games, normal talking, whatever," Stovall told me. "He wouldn't use it every single day, but if you would just talk to him he'd use it, especially if you used it. It was kind of like he was one of the boys. ... He would tell (the white assistant) to close his ears."


I played football at Ball State in the late 1980s. I enjoyed my time on the campus. It was not perfect, but it was not hostile. I asked Stovall if the campus was racially hostile now.

"It's never been that way and I've been here going on five years," he said. "I've never encountered that. If so, it was nothing to the degree or the magnitude it's being portrayed. ... It's disappointing to hear someone drag your university through the mud. I think it's unprofessional."

I'm sorry, I don't have much sympathy for Ronny Thompson. You don't quit and cry and beg friends in the media to savage the reputation of people you know bent over backwards trying to help you — especially when you know damn well your own actions greatly contributed to your demise.

You don't buckle in 15 months. You stand and fight.

That's Real Talk.