The deservedly esteemed and decidedly controversial columnist for the Kansas City Star, Jason Whitlock provides another provocative and thoughtful piece today on the demise of Kansas State head football coach, Ron Prince.  While Whitlock prefers to be on the front-line in calling out thugs and knuckleheads in the black athletic community, he prefers to play the incendiary race card in Prince's case.  He calls Prince's dismissal "the tale of a black coach cut down before receiving a fair opportunity in a backwoods environment."  

Generally, University towns are considered to be enlightened communities (not that I concur), and this particular university town is just 8 miles from Ft. Riley,  a United States Army post.   The city has been rated by CNN and Money Magazine as one of the top 10 environments in the nation for early retirees.  I would like to hear a definition of what Mr. Whitlock deems "backwoods" about Manhattan, Kansas.

Mr. Prince's demise was clearly facilitated by the fact that he was offered an opportunity for which he was not prepared.   His resume is as thin as Obamas, with no prior head coaching experience and a single long stint as offensive line coach and offensive co-ordinator at the Unversity of Virginia with a smattering of assistant coaching jobs of no real significance.  The fact of the matter is that Prince was thrust into a position for which he was unprepared, Affirmative Action style.

 Whitlock compares Prince's situation to that of Turner Gill at Buffalo in the Mid Athletic Conference.   Gill, like Brady Hoke of Ball State (who happens to be white) is doing it the old-fashioned way, working his way up: learning the ropes and developing the requisite network and experience to work on the grander scale of the BCS. Whitlock rightly concludes that this is the proper path to success, so why the gratuitous slap at Manhattan and the off-handed slam at the Kansas State Athletic Department?

It was widely known that Prince carried himself as a braggart, filled with bravado and prone to promising results he was unable to deliver.  During his near 3 year tenure, Prince was 0 for Nebraska, Missouri and Kansas.  He burned through 14 assistant coaches and certainly created a chaotic atmosphere there.   Whitlock acknowledges Prince's immaturity.

The column is dressed up as a paen for blacks to challenge "still-existing racial inequality.. by combatting it rather than (by) pointless whining."  Yet Whitlock blames the Athletic Department for improperly "nurturing" the cocky blowhard Prince.   Do you think the A.D at USC spends his evenings holding Pete Carroll's hand and stroking his forehead when he muffs a big game?   How much nurturing do you suppose Bobby Knight got while he was coming up?  I would suggest that Prince was rather given ample rope to run the show at Kansas State his way-"carry(ing) himself as the smartest man on campus....talk(ing) over everyone's head."  Yet he treated his coaches in a "humiliating and abusive manner" and "treated his players worse."  Sounds awfully smart to me.  I would suggest he hung himself.

It's really sad to see a generally stand-up guy like Whitlock play the apologist.  He indulges here  in the avoidance of responsibility and is simply practicing victimology.  Prince is victim only of his own arrogance and his own inaccurate opinion of his superiority.   Thrusting unqualified men and women to the front of the line to meet racial quotas is invariably harmful to both those promoted prematurely and those denied the positions they have earned by working their way up.  Ron Prince failed at Kansas State.  Tyrone Whittingham is failing spectacularly at Washington after failing just as big at Notre Dame-whose fault is this?  I'm sure Mr. Whitlock would like to see the instigation of hiring practices for the NCAA akin to the absurd racial guidelines used in the NFL.  There is perhaps no arena of life where the results of one's efforts in a competitive enivronment are so abundantly clear:  in the sporting world, you win or you lose and any fool can look it up.  Prince lost too much, it was his fault and suggesting anything else is just loser talk.