what's a nubian? in a radio interview, paul hornung -- 60s white star from notre dame and the green bay packers -- had this to say. "we can't stay as strict as we are as far as the academic structure is concerned because we've got to get the black athlete. we must get the black athlete if we're going to compete. we open up with michigan, then go to michigan state and purdue - those are the first three games, you know, and you can't play a schedule like this unless you have the black athlete today. you just can't do it."



wow.



quite a bold thing to say. quite a wrong thing to say. he's basically telling us that black athletes are less academically proficient but more athletically capable. i heard him on the mighty 690 this morning and he didn't back off his statements or retract them due to misinterpretation either. he meant what he said. notre dame needs to get more black athletes into its program to win and one of the ways to do that was to lower academic standards.



now, the implications behind what he says is all terribly terribly wrong and totally un-PC. but there is something to what hornung is saying. nobody else says it publicly because any time people even hint at what hornung said, they get lambasted first off, for the record, there are probably a million reasons notre dame football doesn't win. and it isn't because they don't have enough black athletes. the simplest reason for notre dame being unsuccessful is because they suck. period. the golden dome no longer holds as much appeal to the high school athlete of today. it's still a prestige school but no longer a premiere football institution. so they don't get enough blue chip recruits of any color, brown, black, white, yellow, purple, green.



but look at the major sports today. the nba and the nfl are predominantly black. serena and venus are black. tiger is black (at least according to the media). barry bonds is black. aren't these guys dominating american sports? isn't it pointedly obvious to anybody who's played basketball at the local courts that black is better? it may have nothing to do with genetics or anything scientific but i'm willing to say that in a random lottery of guys at the courts, i would put my money on the team of five black guys winning over the five asian guys. same height, same weight, same physical characteristics. but my money would be on the black guys because they are probably more skilled and/or more athletic. just as a general assumption. many factors could go into why but i'm not gonna go into all of those, although they are all very valid. i would also, in the same sort of scenario, take the team of eleven korean guys over eleven chinese guys in a tackle football game. but that may be a more size related bias. although in my opinion, koreans, for some infuriating reason, tend to be more generally athletic. wow, how un-PC am i being right now? screw PC.



anyway the point being, there wasn't a "black court, white court, asian court" at the michigan gym for no reason. it was based on skill level of course, you could go play on the black court if you were asian and good enough but for the most part the middle court was the "black court." i mean, i will admit, even with my superior basketball talent (is there a tongue in cheek symbol on this keyboard?), when i step on the court against a black guy, i feel like i'll probably be slower and jump much less higher without even having seen him play. then again, i'm slow and can barely jump so this isn't much of a comparison. but what i'm talking about here is the general fear and perception of "whoa, they're black, can we hang with them?" hey, it's not just athletically, it's the same with dancing. the societal and colloquial assumption is that if you are black, you probably have rhythm. and dancing is most assuredly not genetic. although i wish it were so that i could explain my lack of ability in it.



i must say that of course there are many exceptions to this athletic rule. yao ming is an excellent asian basketball player. also only valued because he happens to be a seven six giant. european white athletes are beginning to dominant in the nba by way of superior athletic prowess. in fact, many white pro athletes are just as athletic, if not more than, their black teammates. but it's more rare and when a white guy can dunk like vince or dribble like skip we say "you must be black." not because we're serious but because it's the perception. that's what it all is, perception. like an oasis in the desert. a mirage.



so my point is, to bring it all back, is that i can see what hornung is saying. he's being possibly supremely bigoted in equating lower academic standards with blacks but in a way, he's speaking about what he perceives. he sees black athletes dominanting, he says "we need black athletes." he sees black college applicants scoring lower on their admissions tests (due to possible reasons too complex to get into here) and says "we need to lower our standards." what he says ain't right but the perceptions themselves aren't wrong either. it's what we do with those perceptions, such as using them to deny opportunity or equality, that matter.



thanks for listening. see you on the courts. don't dunk on me. i'm frail and break easily. plus, girls might be watching.