For the many times I've missed metro Detroit and my hometown in the last three months, there's a handful of times I don't. The tale of a woman and her male friend partying while her deceased sister lay motionless for two days in the front room of a modest Warren home quickly comes to mind. The never-ending posturing by budget-minded legislators is up there, too, as well as the seemingly endless stories of crime, poverty and unemployment from the region.
But the Detroit News story that a Melvindale High School football assistant libeled Wyandotte High School football coach Ron Adams with a vicious, racially-motivated flyer full of lies before last week's 35-0 Melvindale victory over Wyandotte certainly qualifies as a story so bizarre, fiction would probably be more believable. If I were the superintendent of Melvindale's schools, I'd worry less about damage control and more about hiring the best team of defense lawyers I could find.
We're still talking about just a prep football game, right?
More than the damage caused to the professional and personal reputation of Adams, a highly-respected coach and former prep, collegiate and professional player in the state's corps of football coaches, what does this say of the methods used to motivate players at Melvindale High, specifically those who are black? This is the core crux of the problem in metro Detroit, the racial divide that runs long and deep. That a coach thought a few students would buy in to this fantasy tale of hate speaks louder than any hateful flyer.
If Melvindale really wants to send the right message, forfeit the victory. Tell the entire state of Michigan that motivational tactics by any means necessary doesn't cut it at Melvindale High. If anyone believes that not a single coach or player knew anything of this flyer on Friday, I might be willing to believe Kwame Kilpatrick loves the city of Detroit, George Bush really did think he was going to find weapons of mass destruction and Bill Clinton really didn't inhale.
Firing a rogue assistant coach and shaving that huge $1,500 off the district payroll? Not all that breathtaking in it's corrective might, but forfeiting a victory and teaching student-athletes, parents and coaches alike that your hard work, effort and reputation can be ruined by someone else's moment of pure, unadulterated idiocy?
That victory might mean more than any lawsuit or on-field victory can correct.
Regards...
~ T.C. Cameron authored two prep rivalry books. Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries was released in August, 2008 and Metro Detroit's High School Basketball Rivalries released on Wednesday and is available from book retailers statewide.
I couldn't disagree more this all of this hyperbole regarding Ron Adams from the Melvindale apologists.
A win achieved by morally-questionable means is simply not a worthy win, and just how would forfeiting this win 'punish' the kids? Would they still have made the playoffs? Yes. Would they have more than likely hosted a home game? Yes.
No, Melvindale looked the other way because they wanted the loot that a a 9-0 record would guarantee in hosting a home playoff game. That firing was a joke, shaving a couple thousand dollars off the payroll. That's makes neither a big difference and hardly solves the problem, either.
What Melvindale did was teach the kids that it's OK to us the word nigger, one of the most destructive and divisive words in the English language, and other racially-motivated slurs, to motivate its student-athletes to win a first-place showdown.
I could care less if Adams said what he did or not, because that's not the issue. Personally, I've never seen or heard of him acting this way. I've not heard of anyone bring this up before this flyer was posted. I find it odd that Ron Adams, with that awe-inspiring Eastern Michigan University degree that he and I share, could fool so many people for so long and be a closet racist. I also find it odd that at EMU, where he led the Hurons to a Cal Bowl, and all the professional football he played, and all the football he coached, no one has found him to be a racist.
But in Melvindale, a district that hired Adams to be a coach and gave him a recommendation to be the head man at Wyandotte Roosevelt, after the flyer is distributed and later discovered, every single coach plays dumb by saying they didn't know about it. I don't believe that for a New York minute. This seems to be nothing more than a lot of after-the-fact finger pointing coming out of Melvindale.
I thank you for taking the time to write but Melvindale took the greedy way out. It could have taken a stand and distributed a message that no victory archived by questionable means is a victory worth owning. Instead, Melvindale's coaches fed their kids poison fruit and the school board responded with token action to correct the errors of the adults they hired to lead.
Not a proud moment in the city's history to be sure, and not anywhere I would want my kid to play high school football. You think anything like this would ever have happened under coaches like Charlie Jestice, Al Fracassa, Tom Mach, Ivy Loftin or Paul Temerian? Not a chance.
Posted by: T.C. Cameron | November 04, 2009 at 09:36
Mr. Cameron,
There is much more to this story than meets the eye. Adams is not considering any litigation due to the fact that he did make the statements. There are about 6 people that have already come forward to state they would testify to same in court. That said what the Melvindale asst did is inexcusable but to punish the players does not send the right message at all. I'm sure if you were penalized for the actions of a co-worker for example you would not se it as a lesson learned but rather as an injustice.
Posted by: Partic | November 03, 2009 at 21:29
You need to ask around a bit about Ron Adams...
Posted by: Rob | October 26, 2009 at 18:43
Why punish the kids for what a coach may have done? That doesn't fix anything.
Posted by: Pete Jaeger | October 25, 2009 at 18:14