This May is becoming a terribly cruel month for the Kansas University sports program and it may take a while to work through the pain. Let’s hope the guilty are nailed appropriately, the innocent can find peace, justice and satisfaction and we can concentrate on the games and people who play them as good citizens.
Things were looking pretty good for a while solid potential for the first winning football season since 1995, high hopes for new Big 12 and national prominence in basketball.
Then along came that football assault fiasco and an on-again, off-again basketball recruiting riddle. Add that the Olympic (non-revenue) sports aren’t in the best of shape. Then there’s that internationally infamous chalupa caper that focused so much ridicule on KU and you tend to get the yips. Being an athletics director and coach isn’t nearly as much fun as it once was.
The chalupa fiasco involving a silly footballer at a local Taco Bell made headlines all over the world, honest. It made all sorts of “debacle of the year” lists. It just won’t go away. You run into people around the area and nation, particularly those with Missouri or Kansas State pedigrees, and you cringe anticipating the chalupa trash-talk. Some of it is clever as hell.
But at least we can feel humor about some behemoth trying to squeeze himself through a drive-through window like Preparation H from a restricted tube. Nothing remotely funny about charges by a young woman soccer player that two gridiron mastodons of Jayhawk lineage worked her over with distinct sexual overtones in a parking lot at some night spot.
All evidence is that a lot of fools met in this episode and that nobody handled it as well as was prudent. It behooves investigator-designate Barbara Ballard, a state legislator with considerable expertise in human relations, to assemble whatever committee she needs and hustle like hell to get this issue resolved as quickly as possible. The longer this mess drags out, the worse KU and its people are going to look. And the more disruption we’ll see for activities that have enough challenges without the near-rape that some say occurred.
I hear there were eyewitnesses to the parking lot rumble. The Ballard crew should find out forthwith who they are, what they saw, and who did what and with which and to whom. Then find who was remiss in not getting people to the woodshed if that was called for and suspending or expelling the alleged attackers if they were as bad as some contend.
Adding to the problems of the jock people is that there are Mount Oread faculty folks who want to believe the very worst about anything to do with sports. Just as the pro-jock contingent tends to speedily slough off aberrant behavior as a “boys will be boys” deal, so are there KU faculty and staff who automatically consider athletes guilty until proved innocent.
You can bet football coach Terry Allen (and anyone else involved in the early going) wishes he’d done a lot of things differently. If it turns out his charges were as out-of-line as some say, he has to use them as bad examples and issue warnings to the rest of the squad. “No” means “no,” dammit, and no matter what the setting, when a female tells a male, or males, “Back off, buddy!” that’s how it has to be, hormones be damned.
If they are student athletes, they should be capable of understanding that. If they’re so stupid they can fathom “No!” and “Leave me alone!” then they are too dumb to learn the plays and be kept around to taint the other kids who behave as decent citizens.
KU’s on the pan here, same as a lot of schools anymore, and it needs to make a strong statement about what happened and what it plans to do about it, now and forever more.
Sad thing is, KU football seems poised for a breakthrough in public interest this year. It’s developed some “name” talent, like Dylen Smith, Carl Nesmith, Moran Norris, David Winbush, Harrison Hill, Chaz Murphy guys people know and want to watch. There are promising newcomers and the stage is set for a 6-5 or better year.
But first the sexual assault mess has to be cleaned up. So hurry, Barbara; get the facts, issue the report and let the chips objectively and fairly fall where they may. Right now the program has an anvil on its back.
Then there’s been the uncertainty about basketball recruit DeShawn Stevenson, first coming to KU, then going pro, then passing the entry test and swinging back to KU. I’ll believe he’ll play here when he steps onto the court for that first game. All the while, I’ll wonder how many NCAA-type gumshoes will be snooping around checking possible contacts with agents, suddenly successful test scores, all that jazz. Could be that Stevenson saw that other shooting guards like Courtney Alexander, Morris Peterson, DerMarr Johnson and Chris Carrawell set for the draft and listened to his mother about the merits of collegiate training.
KU’s Roy Williams seems intent on proving he can land a blue-chipper like DeShawn. We have to hope Roy gets him, he’s as good as some think and can fit in with the other guys.
The month has not been very friendly to KU athletics so far. We hope things don’t get worse before they start getting better.
