Dana in the Oregonian in 2014, after the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner:
12/10/2014: Coach Dana Altman thinks National Anthem is the wrong time to protest racism
Our fool of a basketball coach thinks he owns those players. They shouldn’t protest when he’s trying to collect his $2M paycheck, off their free labor.
Fortunately we’ve still got people who can hear someone sing “O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave” and actually understand what it means.
Want to ask the players what they think? No. Duck AD Rob Mullens and his PR flack Craig Pintens have a rule about players talking to reporters without permission, and “Benjamin and Bell have not been made available to comment.”
Dana yesterday, on Twitter:
He’s hoping his student-athletes will reciprocate this love and solidarity when he screws them out of their NIL money and then goes up for another $1M raise.
Oh, athletic messaging – forgetting that the English language is more than just words. “…we would like to extend our deepest condolences…” So do so – don’t tell us you want to. Therefore, I respectfully suggest a rewrite: “…we extend our deepest condolences…” See, then people will see an action (albeit in words), instead of an aspiration.
This story is pretty old and taken out of context.
Really? It seems quite timely, to the point, and in exactly the right context.