Ladies and gentleman, I give you Notre Dame football legend, and former Heisman Trophy winner, Paul Hornung:
Hornung told Detroit's AM-1270 The Sports Station (an ESPN radio affiliate) on Tuesday that Notre Dame must ease up on its academic restrictions because "We gotta get the black athlete," he said. "We must get the black athlete if we're going to compete."Hornung said that Notre Dame's schedule factors into his opinion.
"You can't play that type of schedule," Hornung said. "We're playing eight bowl teams next year ... and it's always year in and year out ... one of the toughest schedules.
"You can't play a schedule like that unless you have the black athlete today. You just can't do it, and it's very, very tough, still, to get into Notre Dame. They just don't understand it, yet they want to win."
Hornung is part of the national radio broadcast team that covers Notre Dame games during the season, and I say there's about a 50/50 chance he won't survive this gaffe.
To assume that Hornung has never done anything wrong is a mistake; his career, despite his myriad of success on the field, was marred by several embarassing off the field incidents including betting on football and a rather hedonisitic lifestyle.
Not that I think either of the last two things are necessarily bad, but…in the public eye it’s better to be discrete, which Hornung was most decidedly not.
It appears as if this “indiscretion” might cost him.
It occurs to me that a healthy percentage of Duke’s football team is black, which should be enough to refute any notions that (A) black athletes can’t hold up under higher academic standards and (B) teams with black athletes are guaranteed winners.
Not that there should’ve been any doubt about either point.
And in the year 2004. Does time pass slower in Indiana?
Can someone explain the difference between what Hornung said and John Thompson’s point when he was refusing to coach games over the NCAA’s Prop 48. As I recall, he argued those “higher standards” (nowhere near as demanding as Duke’s or Notre Dame’s, I suspect) would block access for disadvantaged/minority athletes. What am I missing here, other than Hornung’s defective standing to say something like this out loud?
I would add that it might have been smarter for Hornung to talk about “elite athletes” and leave race out of it, but there was no confusion about what Thompson meant back in the day.