Why LeVelle Moton was right to call out his fellow coaches for being silent
Yahoo Sports' Dan Wetzel, Pete Thamel and SI's Pat Forde discuss the comments by the North Carolina Central men's basketball head coach that his colleagues need to do more and speak out about violence against the African-American community. Subscribe to the Yahoo Sports College Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Video Transcript
DAN WETZEL: Extremely interesting comments, heartfelt comments. I think this is honestly what he's thought for a long time from Lavelle Moton, the head coach at North Carolina Central University basketball coach. He was on ESPN radio, and he said this. "The reality is-- he's talking about his coaching peers. Most of whom are white.
"The reality is a lot of these coaches have been able to create generational wealth. Their grandkids are going to be able to live a prosperous life. Because athletes who are the complexion of George Floyd were able to run a football, throw a football, shoot a basket or whatever have you. So they have been able to benefit from athletes that look like George Floyd and many more.
But whenever people who are the complexion of George Floyd are killed, assassinated, murdered in the street in broad daylight, they're silent. I have a problem with their silence. Because it seems as if black lives matter to them whenever they can benefit from it or whenever they're getting them first downs, catching an alley-oop or shooting a three-pointer or whatever.
When it's time for humanity to speak up on behalf of student athletes, it's silent. It's crickets. And my problem is, if the murdering of black Americans is too risky of an issue for you to stand up as a leader, who are they really playing for?"
Good on some Lavelle for putting it out there. What do you think? We saw a million statements from coaches, schools, leagues. I don't know. What do you think of these comments?
PAT FORDE: Wow, I thought those were very strong comments, very. You know, in a profession where everybody pretty well tries to play nicey nice with each other, which is one of the reasons nobody ever drops a dime on anybody else for cheating, which is a whole other matter. But Lavelle Moton's calling it like he sees it, and I think he sees it pretty well. I really do.
I think that there is a lot of veracity to what he said. Many coaches spoke from the heart and said what they said. There was also some disingenuousness. There was just some flat, I need to say something to it.
And quite frankly, there was probably some who felt like we're being told, we're going to get killed in recruiting, if we don't say something here, you know? I'd like to think that's the minority of people, coaches, but I think that was probably, at least, a little bit of the mindset out there. So you get statement after statement after statement, but yeah, there's a lot of times when things happen when college coaches are the last people to comment.
PETE THAMEL: First of all, Lavelle Moton's comments were awesome, and I really thought they just sort of were streamlined right to the core of this issue. There's a huge disparity in the leadership voices of these programs compared to the people playing them. And when you look around college athletics and you see that, like, why is Lavelle Moton not an ACC coach?
He was about to go to his fourth straight NCAA tournament this year. They won the regular season, if it didn't happen. If they were able to play their conference tournament, he would have been favored to do that.
And you look at you look at some of that, and he's not even a guy who quite frankly is really mentioned. If you really go through and look at college sports and look at who is playing them versus who is leading them, there's a huge disparity there. And there needs to be mechanisms to change that.
DAN WETZEL: I would think that they would be very, very in tune on this, and I would love to see one coach step up in football or basketball. And not just put out one of these things, but like call them out. We need to do this. We need to do that. I am going to do this. Really be aggressive.
These guys do have generational money. They've got F you money. They've got power. I'm not saying, this coach. I'm not going to call out by name, because I don't know what they think.
But there's got to be somebody in this group of coaches that have millions and millions of dollars. I'm talking hundreds and hundreds of people here that can sit there, and sit there, and go, yeah, you know what? I'm going, and I'm not talk like Lavelle Moton. And if it hurts my career, then so be it.