[JRutledge]

First of all can we stop talking about racism alone? Racism is about a feeling of superiority of one race over another. This is not about an individual, this is about an institution. You might at one time had people with certain feelings, but that is not as clear anymore considering the places people now come from and the age of those attitudes not being acceptable. The best example of this is the way college football coaches are hired. There is a system and a structure in place that would not even consider Black players to become coaches, then coordinators, then head coaches. It is kind of hard to get to a level when people do not think you can work at the lowest of levels. Then once they work at similar levels, then you do not have your alumni get behind those coaches to run the program. Things are changing but there is a long way to go.

We need to discuss discrimination or institutional racism which means the system and the workings of the system did not give all people an opportunity. You can have individuals who are not personally racist or sexiest for example, but still have an institution to run that accomplishes the same thing. Women's college basketball has gone out of their way to recruit, develop and identify qualified officials. There is a coordinator that goes out and identifies younger women and even African-American officials and gives them games at the lower college levels and grooms them to be D1 officials down the road. So much that many males are left out and get upset about that fact.

The way you overcome that institutional action is to change in the inter-working of that institution which John has already done by advocating younger officials and advocating the philosophies he used when the coordinator of the Horizon League. John hires good people, but it is possible there was a structure in place he is willing to change. I know he has advocated a national system instead of the usual each conference assigning games. That might open things up to all kinds of people. I will not mention names, but 15-20 years ago, guys were getting opportunities at the D1 level because they were asked to work the game, unlike they have to go to camps to get a sniff at the college ranks. That is not a knock on them, it just is the truth. I am sure there were not the efforts to get a broader pool of officials from different places like there is today. That did not have to just deal with race, that could have been where you live and who you knew personally.

Also keep in mind John does not make the decisions about the assignments, the committee does. He has input, but he does not just have the final say. They take information from John's system and conferences have to make recommendations, but it is not all on John's shoulders and it is really unfair to credit him with this burden.

Peace