Posted on 09/04/2023 10:28:05 AM PDT by DFG
The University of Central Florida had to apologize for a social media post deemed insensitive during the team’s 56-6 blowout win in its season opener against Kent State on Thursday.
The post featured UCF quarterback John Rhys Plumlee on the phone on the sidelines at FBC Mortgage Stadium, captioned, “Somebody call the National Guard.”
While the post was supposed to reference a famous Shannon Sharpe moment in which he pretended to use the sideline phone to speak to the President to call the National Guard during a 1996 Broncos game against the Patriots, it instead reminded people about a tragic Kent State moment more than 50 years ago.
In 1970, the National Guard was deployed to Kent State’s campus because of students protesting the Vietnam War, and troops fired into the crowd, killing four students and injuring nine others, causing a nationwide student strike.
“An unfortunate post was made with the intention to reference the famous Shannon Sharpe sideline clip of him on the phone from a 1996 game against the New England Patriots,” UCF said in a statement to USA Today.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Be gentle with us.
Watching that game last night pained me on so many levels.
Maybe there will be knee-twisting in the pile ups like in the old days.
I’m with you.
I grew up 40 miles east of Kent State and remember the news stories of that day. As I got older, and read facts, I came to the conclusion that while a sad event they DIDN’T SHOOT ENOUGH OF THOSE LONG HAIR POT SMOKING HIPPY FREAKS!
Throw rocks at people with loaded rifles, EXPECT bad results.
Yes they are.
Yeah, but I did kind of enjoy watching Brian Kelly suffer. Can’t stand that guy.
People are so sensitive. (Written with my best lisp)
I think all the Deion talk kind of fired FSU up.
Yeah, that was good.
It was a great day.
That was pretty good.
Two of the four who were killed were not at the protest but some distance away in a parking lot which just happened to be in the line of fire.
I remember Kent State. I was in fifth grade. Got to see the Ohio National Guard driving south towards Kent when I was walking home from school one afternoon in early May. Little did I know what was to take place. I just thought it was cool to see the military.
I also had the memorable experience of being able to sit at the dinner table between my brother, who was in his first year in college that year, and my Dad, a US Army WW2 vet. The conversations were, well, lively!
I once saw a cartoon featuring a scoreboard displaying
NATIONAL GUARD 4
KENT STATE 0
Back then I was a “shoot the bastards” believer, until I later learned that those shot were not the right ones.
Man, the national guard shoots up a bunch of dirty hippies ONE TIME and they never let you forget about it.
Saw Tv stories when we got back to the YRBM. The general consensus was that four should have been forty. After I got back and went through the protest gauntlet at SFO to get home, I was thinking 400…
Don't blame ya. They'd already burned down the old ROTC building, throwing rocks at the firefighters, and trashed the town. Looked like the place was turning into chaos central.
Grrrrrrrrrr...
“Play to the echo of the whistle boys.”
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