It hardly seems fair.
Getting tarred with a brush of some stuff that’s not even your doing. You try to do something nice - open your dorms and fields to a Fellowship of Christian Athletes’ 7 on 7 football camp, and some knuckleheads have to go and get themselves arrested (maybe). Plus, there’s video of it happening in one of YOUR dorm rooms - #204 of Clinton Hall, we learn from a police report that’s published by somebody on X, that used to be Twitter.
Of course, you know I’m talking about hard-luck Presbyterian College. A football team using the campus had to get into a fracus, and now that team’s football coach is suspended - uh, no - it’s paid leave.
While the high school administration takes a look at the football program as a whole - the football program that this guy inherited when he was hired in April, coming over from Walhalla.
It looks for all the world like players-on-player “justice” and, yes, you want the LEADERS on your team to solve concerns within your team; but, young people being as they are, sometimes things can get out of control.
I know that’s a terrible stereotype -- adults do some pretty horrific stuff, too. But stomping on a guy who’s down and pretty much concussed - wow, that’s low - that’s certainly not a team that I would want to have any part of. Now lawyers are involved and they are soliciting for people to “come forward” with concerns about this team AND Presbyterian College. Surely, somebody’s going to remember not too far back that some univited guests yelled racially hateful things at the black women on the Howard University lacrosse team.
Again, some knuckleheads.
When I first saw the lacrosse thing on-line, and knew it had something to do with OUR college, I was like, “Oh, this is going to be bad.”
I had the same reaction last weekend.
Presbyterian College doesn’t need this. It’s a struggle enough trying to keep a liberal arts college alive in this era of people being opposed to diversity, equity and inclusion not to have to police the dorm rooms of visiting football players -- 99.9% of the camps and visiting groups to the Clinton campus come and go without so much as a hint of scandal (witness PC hosting South Carolina Girls’ State); but then you get this, and whenever you Google Presbyterian College what’s the first thing that pops up? News articles about a beating in a dorm. While the vast majority of the COLLEGE students were still at home.
And just think about the FCA. “Commentators” look at this and say, “It happened, ironically, at a Christian football camp!” with their writing-voice rising in indignation and disbelief. Yes, because, you see, knuckleheads can be ANYWHERE.
The first reaction statement to this sorry state of affairs from the School District of Pickens County said something to the effect of “while there may be two sides to this story” -- kind of like “good people on both sides” - it turned violent, and we don’t condone or promote violence, and such and such. Every football player knows and every football coach will tell you, the key to the game is controlled violence - a steady head everywhere else and a WHACK when it’s mano-e-mano.
CONTROLLED. Especially when you’re a visitor in someone else’s house.
Contact Vic MacDonald at 864-833-1900 or news@clintonchronicle.net
