A group of ex players for the Hawkeyes team has threatened to sue the University athletic program if there demands are not met. They want $20 million in cash, as well as the resignation / firing of head coach Kirk Ferentz, assistant coach Brian Ferentz and athletic director Gary Barta.
This is all because of alleged racial discrimination that the ex-players claim hurt their careers financially, emotionally, and physically. I think it is a baseless and frivolous suit and an attempt at a money grab that I hope the university fights and does not give in to.
Iowa is a competitive team, but they are never in any real danger of winning anything major and therefore it is understandable that when you decide to attend Iowa on an athletic scholarship, there is a very real chance that you are going to be relegated to the sidelines as far as exposure is concerned. Also, the coach's job is to put forth the best team he possibly can yet some of these players are alleging that he intentionally didn't play them because they were black.
Kirk Ferentz is actually a very good coach seeing as how he has made it to post-season bowl games in all but 4 of his 21 seasons at the helm. His job depends on performing and I think it is extremely unlikely that he intentionally sidelines better players because of their skin color.
Other demands that the group that is suing is making is that they want a permanent position in the athletic directors office to be created that can ONLY be filled by a black person. While the accusations of racism towards the staff could possibly be true (there isn't any proof of it as of yet) this one suggestion, that would reserve a seat in the administration for a person based solely on their skin color, definitely is racist. I wonder if anyone else shares my sentiment in the irony in all of this.
The suit also states that everyone has to undergo anti-racism training as well as an advisory group consisting of black players and "anti-racism professionals" (whatever that means,) as well as tuition waivers for any black athlete who didn’t graduate and wasn't on a full scholarship.
This lawsuit, if successful, would set a dangerous precedent for any college sports program in the country. Any time anyone who happens to be black is being lead by someone who is white and they don't go to the NFL on a multi-million dollar contract (most players don't) or they don't perform well in the classroom, they would be able to sue the university rather than face the fact that maybe they just weren't good enough to go pro just like 95% of all the people that play college football or didn't study hard enough to earn a college degree (this also happens to a lot of people.)
Was there genuine racism in the sport program at Iowa? I can't say. I wasn't there. But I think that when we look at football in a general sense and see how most of the players happen to be a particular color, it does seem very unlikely to me that any coach would be anti-black if they are interested in actually winning games.
In another funny twist, one of the articles referred to the potential plaintiffs as being "ex-black players" instead of black ex-players."