As a sports broadcaster for this university and as someone who has been
following the intricacies of the DeMarcus Graham investigation, I am
sickened and disheartened at how Central Michigan Life is treating
Central Michigan Football coach Brian Kelly – trying to sully his good
name by dragging it through the mud of racial prejudice.

After reading Friday’s CM-Life, I had to go back and look at the
actual comments that Coach Kelly made in the Detroit Free Press
article. “Did he actually say that?” I thought.

In looking through the article, however, I found that CM Life had
not only taken the comments drastically out of context, but had also
printed an editorial suggesting Central Michigan University knew about
a cover-up.

The quote that has people up in arms at the newspaper reads; “For
example, a number of them were African Americans that had been in that
culture of violence and they’re taught to look away.”

Before they went right to the presses to try and get the buzz going
on campus, someone with an iota of common sense should have read this
correctly: “A number of them were African Americans that had been in
that culture of violence.”

Kelly is speaking directly about these students, not making any
generalizations about race. These students had come to him and talked
about their own experiences. They had been in a violent culture,
regardless of their color or of the color of the people around them.

Another point: I am told that the interviewer for the Free Press was
African American and he did not find anything wrong with Kelly’s
comments.

As for this “cover-up” baloney: again, you have to read the Free
Press article with some sort of brain power.

CM Life is making it sound like Kelly told players not to be
truthful, when in actuality he says that players were indeed truthful
but not forthcoming. CM Life deliberately omitted a part of a quote
where Kelly said that he told players to be forthcoming: That players
were not answering questions because the police were not asking them.

There is a difference between being forthcoming and being truthful,
but you are not going to answer questions that haven’t been asked.

There is no cover-up here, and, once again, CM Life used their
massive pull on this campus to incite an uprising by the community on
the heels of a day where parents and potential students were taking
this newspaper home with them.

I truly believe that everyone involved in this article, from the
person who wrote it to the person who allowed it to be printed. should
be reprimanded, if not dismissed for their obvious lack of journalistic
integrity.

This paper is trying to ruin the life of a man who has done nothing
but good things for this university. This is tabloid, yellow journalism
at its finest, and the people of this university should be ashamed for
being so quick to judge.

E-mail the author: defaultuser