SCOTT on:

   No F's for Bama

The Black Coaches and Administrators, an organization whose primary purpose is to foster the growth and development of ethnic minorities at all levels of sports (that's taken straight from its web page), has come out with its annual report card for college football on its hiring practices and the news is not good for some.

For Alabama, the news is downright ugly. The BCA slapped the Tide with a big, fat, red, "F" for the way it conducted its search that ultimately ended with the hiring of Nick Saban.

There are three things about this I don't like. One, I don't appreciate the competition when it comes to ripping the Alabama football program; I staked my claim to that fertile turf long ago and I don't need any company. Two, these claims are total b.s. and the BCA owes Alabama a public apology for them. Three, because of number two, I'm forced to defend Alabama which puts me in a bad spot because of number one.

From the USA Today story Wednesday about this "report card:" "Alabama got F's for the makeup of its search committee and for minority candidates considered."

An "F" for minority candidates considered, huh?

Funny, I thought Rich Rodriguez, who was offered the Alabama job and turned it down, was Hispanic?

Is he not?

I just checked his biography, he is.

Do Hispanics not count to the BCA?

Is Rich Rodriguez not "minority" enough?

Are some minorities more important than others in the eyes of the BCA?

Is this just an attempt to smear the reputation of Alabama – again, bordering real close to infringement on my territory – regardless of the truth?

Is the BCA just plain stupid?

Is the BCA lazy?

Is the BCA playing off Southern stereotypes by trying to portray Alabama in a negative racial light despite the school's best effort to hire a minority?

All these are questions that have to be asked and deserved to be answered by the BCA, because the BCA loves to dish it out and call people names and threaten lawsuits, but it has libeled Alabama in my opinion with the gross misrepresentation – no, downright total and blatant fallacy – that Alabama did not pursue a minority football coach when it had a vacancy.

Alabama didn't just pursue a minority candidate, it hired one. Or so the school thought before Rodriguez wriggled away at the last moment.

Alabama doesn't deserve an "F" for its hiring practices, it deserves an "A."

But just correcting the Tide's "F" to an "A" by this irrelevant pressure group doesn't go nearly far enough in correcting the damage done to the reputation of the University and its athletic department because of this completely false and inflammatory accusation. The BCA should immediately, and I mean today, run a public apology to the University of Alabama in the form of a full page advertisement taken out in the USA Today.

The BCA, in a highly public and visible manner so that no one can be left with the incorrect impression it has created, needs to take total blame for its lack of accuracy in researching the Alabama football coaching hire and applaud the University for the job it did in trying to promote minority coaches within its football program.

This story was mentioned on the cover of the most widely read newspaper in the country. It was fodder for talk shows all over America. The buzz words were "race," "Alabama," "denied opportunity," "F," "Black," "Saban."

Those buzz words and the utter mistruths promoted by the BCA through its shocking ignorance in researching this report only foster the misconception, a still widely held misconception in many parts of the county, that Southerners and people from Alabama are a bunch of racists who view someone by skin color first and promote a good old boy network that excludes outsiders.

I spent the last four years of my life living in Connecticut. I know that presumption exists.

I lived 10 years in Alabama and know that reality does not.

It is erroneous and agenda driven reports like this that continue to feed the prejudices of people outside the South that we Southerners are all bigoted hillbillies clinging to Jim Crow.

That's incendiary, it's malicious, and the BCA owes the University of Alabama an apology for casting those aspersions on it.

The intimation from the BCA with this "F" grade on minority hiring is that the University of Alabama is racist.

How do you think that effects recruiting?

How do you think that effects perception? Not just of the University, but of the state of Alabama.

How do you think that affects the lives of the people at the University of Alabama who've tried to do everything they know how to break from the racial injustices of the past?

The BCA, through this poisonous "report card," has slurred an entire state in general, and a proud university in specific, and it has slurred them over something they did not do!

Where is the apology?

Where is the correction?

Where is the recognition that Alabama not only considered a minority candidate for its vacant head football coaching position, but interviewed one and offered its job to one?

Or does the BCA not offer corrections and apologies when it damages somebody? Does the BCA just chalk that up to breaking a few eggs to make an omelet? Does the BCA not consider facts important when it wants to promote a stereotype?

This is the cold, hard, truth as I see it: the Black Coaches and Administrators is not a fair minded organization seeking to raise awareness about the problem of too few minority coaches in college football, a problem which is real and deserves attention. The BCA is a hostile pressure group well read in the Jackson/Sharpton race-baiting handbook and it's using a sympathetic media and totally biased research to try and force colleges and universities into hiring black – not minority, black – coaches whether those coaches are qualified or not.

No one else has the guts to say it, I will.

Prejudice and stereotypes have two sides, I've already been suspended and demoted from jobs for attempting to shed light on both of those sides so if I go down over what I've just written, so be it.

I have no allegiance to the University of Alabama, thousands of people think I hate the University of Alabama, but the University of Alabama was wronged in a deeply sinister way by the BCA and someone has to stand up and expose the lies and the jackals who tell them.

The perception that we're racist is something Southern people need to get serious about. It's something we need to fight.

It's a sick fallacy perpetuated by insulting reports like the one issued by the BCA.

It's something I take personally because I know it's not true and I know it negatively influences the way Southern people and Southern institutions are thought of in ways you can't even imagine.

The BCA is calling the University of Alabama racist; I've researched the claims, they are untrue.

Who's going to hold the BCA accountable for this outrage?