New Ole Miss head coach Kermit Davis didn’t exactly get his tenure off on the right foot on Monday evening.
At his introductory press conference, Davis had this to say about the way that he’s going to run his program: “What is Ole Miss Basketball going to look like? It’s going to be relentless, athletic, explosive, a team that’s going to have to play on and on and on to beat. It’s going to be a team that’s going to be unselfish. We’re going to play fast and smart in transition. We’re going to try to get easy baskets. We’re going to try to play with great body language. We’re going to be a respectful team that respects the flag and the National Anthem. All those things from culture is what we’re about. It’s who we’re going to be.”
At Ole Miss, Davis is going to be recruiting young men that, for the most part, are African-American, which is precisely the demographic that has dealt with the institutionalized racism and police brutality that sparked the Black Lives Matter movement and spawned Colin Kaepernick’s initial protest.
When you’re already at a recruiting disadvantage because you’re Ole Miss, giving every other coach in the conference ammo to use against you on the recruiting trail -- Do I need to spell that one out for you? -- is probably not the best idea.
But that’s neither here nor there.
Because we’re talking about how he’s building a program that respects the flag and the National Anthem, right?
The mascot for the school that he’s now coaching is, quite literally, named after confederate soldiers. If he’s such a proud American that he cannot tolerate black men protesting against institutionalized racism within our borders, how can he coach a team named after the soldiers that tried to tear this country apart 150 years ago just because they wanted to be able to own those black men?
If that’s not hypocrisy at its finest, I don’t know what is.
