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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 628712, member: 289"] Here is the next sentence: [SIZE=11px][FONT=verdana][COLOR=#333333]The hard slash of mouth dissolved into a soft smile. "He assured me he was none of those things, so I sat down and talked with him. I don't know what's happening anymore. I'm not supposed to be a football coach, I'm supposed to be a sociologist or something."[/COLOR][/FONT][/SIZE] [SIZE=4][FONT=times new roman][COLOR=#000000]I recall reading another SI article from that era that said that one of the national civil rights organizations had sent around a memo that their cause needed maximum publicity and that that could be achieved by demonstrating against the local football coach, a prominent person who was a symbol of discipline and the establishment. Looking back now, I've no doubt that there were legitimate complaints. A school that had been so well served by black athletes should have hired a black coach long before it did. The comments on Houston, a southern school, having so much a better situation than Syracuse, after we had integrated the Cotton Bowl and the Sugar Bowl are certainly disappointing. [/COLOR][/FONT][/SIZE] [SIZE=4][FONT=times new roman][COLOR=#000000]But there were a number of rebellions against coaches at this time- Lloyd Eaton, Vic Rowan, Dee Andros, etc. and I've always felt they were being orchestrated nationally more than locally. I also recall Syracuse rallying to have their last good season under Ben and that the team, when asked to vote on allowing the suspended players to rejoin the team, voted no on most of them. I think if Ben were overtly racist, we would never have had all the good black players we had or the success they brought and the 1970 team would not have rallied around him. His sentiments about protesters were not unusual for those of his generation or in his profession and were held by many coaches who faced no black rebellion. For those reasons I've always thought there was something contrived and artificial about that rebellion and I've cringed a bit when I've heard those players being honored as "heroes". The idea that they should be a statue dedicated to them rather than Jim Brown or Floyd Little, (who I think should have statues near to Ernie's) or to Schwartzwalder himself, seems inappropriate, to put it mildly. I wonder what Floyd would have to say about it? [/COLOR][/FONT][/SIZE] [/QUOTE]

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