Hornung: Notre Dame should lower academic standards to 'get the black athlete'

AP | 3/31/04 | Unknown

[KJacob]

Football great Paul Hornung said in a radio interview that his alma mater, Notre Dame, needs to lower its academic standards to ''get the black athlete.''

''As far as Notre Dame is concerned, we're going to have to ease it up a little bit,'' Hornung told Detroit's WXYT-AM in an interview before the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame banquet Tuesday.

WXYT's sister station, WWJ-AM in Detroit, played a portion of the interview for The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Hornung, who is white, won the 1956 Heisman Trophy at Notre Dame. He went on to star for the NFL's Green Bay Packers and is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

''We can't stay as strict as we are as far as the academic structure is concerned because we've got to get the black athlete,'' Hornung said in the interview. ''We must get the black athlete if we're going to compete.''

Hornung and Notre Dame associate athletic director John Heisler did not immediately return phone messages left by the AP on Wednesday.

Hornung, who is part of the Westwood One Radio team that broadcasts Notre Dame games, has previously criticized the school, saying its academic requirements have hurt the athletic department.

''We open up with Michigan, then go to Michigan State and Purdue — those are the first three games, you know, and you can't play a schedule like this unless you have the black athlete today,'' he told WXYT. ''You just can't do it.''

Notre Dame's football team went 5-7 last season, its second under Tyrone Willingham, the first black head coach in any sport in school history.

Of the 68 scholarship players on the Notre Dame roster for spring practice, 35 are black and 33 are white. Of the incoming freshmen, 12 are black and five are white. If no one leaves the program, 55.2 percent of Notre Dame's football players next season would be black.

According to the latest NCAA statistics available, during the 2001-02 season, the percentage of Division I-A football players who were white was 48.8 percent and 43.8 percent were black

[KJacob]

Someone will have to help me. How does constantly telling black youths that they are not smart enough to make it on there own help the black community? How can people not understand how insulting this is to blacks?

[newsmeat.com]

Hornung gives to Democrats!

Paul Hornung campaign contributions

[giznort]

He also was naughty and bet on games and got caught. Got booted out, I think.

[Ribeye]

Why would ANYONE want to lower the acedemic standards in a school so the FOOTBALL TEAM has a better chance at winning games??? Lower the educational standards so we can get a pennant to hang in the gymn??

This is absurd. Schools and universities are for LEARNING, not cheering on the football team. If you've got a lousy team with educated players that's much better for our society than a bunch of trogs with advanced degrees who can't spell but make us happy when the old "alam mater" wins one.

[Henrietta]

And yet we have "affirmative action" policies, widely supported by blacks and white liberals, which are meant to give blacks an unearned advantage because they supposedly can't compete on a level playing field with white folks. I think this is insulting to blacks, too, but blacks claim that those that feel as I do are "racist."

Puzzling, isn't it?

[GSWarrior]

Maybe I don't get it, but why does Notre Dame feel that it is somehow chosen by higher authority to have top flight sports teams? I don't understand the mystique I guess.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Unfortunately, a lot of blacks have sold out to the DemocRat plantion and simply don't care.

[TaMoDee]

Nope, He got a year off. Came back the next year in perfect physical shape.

[ridesthemiles]

I am from Wisconsin, and this is unsulting to Notre Dame and to the blacks who are working to get good grades. If Paul Horning thinks lowering standards is a good thing, he needs to sober up and take a good long look at the decline in the behavior of the players in the NBA.
Go back to the bar, Paul. You are an embarrassment if you did think this thru. If you didn't, keep quiet.

[ServesURight]

People here in Titletown are angry over Hornung's remarks, especially in the sports bars adjacent to Lambeau Field.

[radiohead]

How does constantly telling black youths that they are not smart enough to make it on there own help the black community?

It doesn't.

How can people not understand how insulting this is to blacks?

'Cause they're liberals - the most racist, patronizing, people on the planet.

[don'tbedenied]

Money. Money. Money.

What does NBC pay ND annually? + Gate receipts, ND sports gear, and happy alumni giving.

Why do you think ND is the wealthiest Catholic school in America? The Pope? The Chemistry Department?

Answer: The football program.

[marshmallow]

Notre Dame's most pressing need is to rediscover its Catholic character, not fine tune its athletic program.

It is a nest of liberals and dissenters from orthodox Catholic teaching, the most prominent and vocal of whom, is Fr. Richard McBrien.

Who cares if their football team went 5-7 last season? That is not what a supposedly Catholic academic institution is about.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Looks like the Golden Boy has lost some of his luster.

Race and sports simply do not mix. I wonder, though, if blacks and the liberal media will denounce Hornung like they did to Rush when he called McNabb overrated. Hornung is a big-time Rat supporter.

[First_Salute]

We could save a lot of money by lowering the standards for the manufacturing of medical equipment, and then the use.

Skip anesthesia, too; if you live through the pain, good for you.

[don'tbedenied]

Its not a "chosen" thing it's merely an expectation of excellence.
Which should be everyone's goal reagrdless of the field. (no pun intented or implied)

[xkaydet65]

The last time I looked Notre Dame's roster was predominantly African American, as is their coach. These young men have not found it impossible to attend NDU. Perhaps what Hornung means is that they are not the best "athletes".

This would be a cultural problem in sports. Young athletes who show great promise in Jr Hi have very little expected of them of a scholastic nature. They are pampered, primped and prepped for their sport. They are led to believe that the NBA or the NFL is salivating for them. The sad fact is that this "game" is played on a mostly Black audience who see sports as their ticket to fortune, celebrity and ESPN Sportscenter. These "students' cannot meet NDU's entrance standards, but many other "schools" are happy to have them and discard them without offering any educational benefit.There are currently 50 Division One colleges who have not graduated a Black athlete in the last seven years in basketball.

As long as society places emphasis on the achievement of Black athletes and entertainers and no emphasis on Black business leaders, statesmen, scientists or educators, Black kids will continue to fall for the Sports or rap is the ticket to fame and fortune.Sad, because if you fail to become a business leader, the skills you acquire along the way prepare you for something else in life worthwhile. If you fail to be the new Michael Jordan. The skills you acquire prepare you for drinking 40s in the park between pick up games of 3 on 3.

[PallMal]

I can bet you double or nothing that Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, et. al. will say nothing about this.

Whites can insult blacks all they want, provided that the white that does the insulting gives a "reward" to the ones insulted. In this case, it's an athletic scholarship. Basically, the template is that you can insult blacks and get away with it, and the way you do that is to add the "therefore" clause that would give away some handout.

For example, if someone were to just say "blacks can't pass this exam", then you will hear from Jesse Jackson and others. On the other hand, if you say "blacks can't pass this exam, therefore we should lower our standards to get them into the (fill in the blank) industry", then you get no problems from the race hustlers.

The frustrating thing is that the blacks that accept this are usually the ones that call people such as Condoleeza Rice "sellouts to the white man", when reality, the real "sellouts" are the ones that would accept whites calling them inferior in exchange for a few pieces of silver.

[BluH2o]

Blacks are getting into Notre Dame on their academic merit ... the problem is, recruiting top flight black football players whose academics don't measure up ... Notre Dame isn't (or, at least not yet) compromising their academic standards to accommodate this type of student athlete. The service academy's don't lower their standards either and manage, for the most part, to remain competitive. Maybe Notre Dame should play in a different conference, compete against Ivy League football teams.