Ringling Has a New Coach

Wichita Lineman:

Pardon the anecdote, but way back when I was a young Senior Airman in the USAF, several of us in my unit got into a discussion concerning different standards for admittance into the AF Academy. The standards were lower at the time for racial minorities and women than for white males. There were, as I recall, five of us in the discussion - two white males (myself and one other) and three non-white females (one of Asian descent, one Hispanic and one black).

Now, as it was I was slightly more 'liked' by the minority group than was my counterpart, who, by the way, outranked everyone else in the group. There were several reasons for my greater 'popularity' amongst my peers, the most important of which (for our purposes here) was that I was more apt to listen to their arguments and objections countering ours, even when I vehemently disagreed. Before all was said and done, we all basically just agreed to disagree. Which *should have been* the end of it, but, unfortunately, that was not to be the case.

The young black Airman, as it turns out, heard nothing but abject "racism" and "misogyny" spewing from the mouth of the other white guy. As such, she determined to completely ignore military protocol and take her case straight to our commander, who - not ignoring protocol - immediately sent her back down the chain of command.

Each of us was then - one-by-one - interviewed by our squadron's MSgt assigned to the task of determining whether or not there was cause to investigate the complainant's claims further. I remember very well reacting in absolute horror and disbelief when I learned (in my interview) of the charges leveled against my compatriot. The discussion certainly got a little heated, but there was no overt racism involved. I explained all of this to the MSgt in question, and after we were all interviewed individually he determined that there was no truth to the accusations thus no cause for further investigation.

I was not so 'liked' by the minorities in our group after that, who later accused me of white washing the truth of what was actually said in that discussion. Of course I didn't particularly care whether they liked me or not; my concern was not popularity, but to set the record straight to the best of my ability.

I read the article (as well as several others) you posted the link to way back when. Best I can tell the whole thing comes down to unverifiable claims that Koons exposed himself to a group of his players in the locker room. He said, she said, or hearsay 'evidence' in other words. Kids are young people, and people (young and old alike) unfortunately sometimes lie, or stretch the truth for their own purposes. Kids are also notoriously oblivious to real world consequences as a result of their lies and half-truths.

There is a reason no one ever went to the cops to report the alleged incident. I realize of course that the modern default position is to believe the kids over the adults no matter what, but that is just foolishness, with all due respect.