UPDATE: English apologizes: EMU's Ron English offends single mothers

Re: EMU's Ron English offends single mothers

She'll hit it in seven years, but I'm trying not to bring that up. Not to be stereotypical, but she gets cranky about her age.

 

Re: EMU's Ron English offends single mothers

I was raised by a single mom and now work heavily with college kids, so to add my voice to the chorus, English is dead on here and there's not much debate to be had, IMO.

But on a subject this thread hasn't spent much time on: this column is total horse-shit journalism. The writer took the absolute most extreme take you could pull from English's words — that ALL kids raised by single mothers are fuck-ups and he would offer NONE of those kids scholies — and then trolled for response.

In fact what he actually said was that kids from single-mother homes present challenges not present in kids from two-parent homes and that, since he has a lot of other shit to worry about aside from teaching his new LB how to pee straight, he'd prefer the latter as he builds his admittedly shitty program into a better future. He never said he didn't or wouldn't offer on kids from single-parent homes and if the next Vince Young was coming up without a father in his life then English would certainly offer the kid ... or he'd lose his job for being shitty at it.

BTW, perhaps quality black coaches like Ron English wouldn't have to be so picky about their recruits if they weren't dropped into the coaching ghettos to start their careers. Way off topic, I know, but these guys get dumped into no-win situations, have to develop an approach to win in a place where they are set up to lose, and then we bitch about how they do it.

 

Re: EMU's Ron English offends single mothers

Fair enough and I agree that schools are dropping the focus on black and white and worrying about the only color that really matters: green.

But I do feel like English is being treated very unfairly here andf if you were to survey his two scholarship classes, wonder how many kids are from single-parent homes. My guess is, representation is adequate because it almost has to be. If you limit your recruiting to kids from intact families these days, you'll have very small classes.

On the coaching ghetto comment, I remain steamed about DeWayne Walker starting out at NMSU while Steve Sarkisian and Lane Kiffin are grabbing up Pac-10 and SEC jobs. I know, I know ... it's more complicated than that, but still ... (and anybody who cites Lane Kiffin's time with the Raiders as a qualifying factor for him getting the Tennessee job is nuts. )

 

Re: EMU's Ron English offends single mothers

Add in Joker Phillips at Kentucky while we're at it. The Bluegrass State is suddenly quite the trend-setter here.

 

Re: EMU's Ron English offends single mothers

The definition of the word implies that it's about how people think about groups. Do you have another definition that Webster or the Oxford English Dicionary doesn't know about? Well, other than the printing process.

 

Re: EMU's Ron English offends single mothers

I don't know that there has been a ton of outrage over the comments.

But English called the News' Terry Foster, who blogged about it.

http://apps.detnews.com/apps/blogs/terryfosterblog/index.php?blogid=1926

 

Devil's advocate, and I've skimmed this thread, so I might have missed it.

Say I get married and have a kid (god help us all). We live in Cleveland. He REALLY wants to go play at a certain school in Florida, but that school limits its recruiting to a four-state perimeter. Does everyone get upset when the school excludes my kid, when it's no more his fault where he lives than it is the child of a single parent household that he's in that situation?

God, I don't even feel like I explained that properly, but I'm watching Bachelor Pad. Schools limit their recruiting decisions all the time on arbitrary things.

 

In terms of geography, I would think a big reason that schools limit recruiting to certain areas would be travel costs to send coaches further out than the four-state perimeter that you mentioned. Instead of flying them all over the place, they have them drive, or fly short distances.

Plus, they may figure a kid might not want to go to school so far away from home. Hence, the school limits their recruiting area.

 

http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_us1294280#m_en_us1294280

Emphasis added. Stereotypes are a simple mental shortcuts we take because we have to take them. The word has gotten an extremely negative stereotype because it's become synonymous with "negative stereotype about a disadvantaged group," but it's an essential mental tool.


I find it odd that of the entire post, which included several direct questions and attempts to have a real conversation about the subject, you chose to worry about that one nitpick and ignore the rest.

 

I understand why. But I'm just saying, it's no more or less the kid's fault where he lives than how many parents he has. And no one bitches about that decision in recruiting.

 

Excellent defensive coach? Well he had a pretty solid 2006 season where they demolished Vanderbilt and went through the Big Ten like a knife through butter (until OSU). But that's all negated when your team loses to Appalachian State the next year and follows that loss up by letting Oregon hang 48 on ya. After that, it was obvious he was a mediocre coach.