Doh! CU missing as many great black students as ‘great black athletes’

Former CU-Boulder Coach Bill McCartney told the Denver Post that the university will never win again until its sports teams become less white. “You can’t win without the great black athlete,” he said, taking a chapter from disgraced sportscaster Jimmy the Greek. McCartney didn’t mention any need to up the university’s paltry population of non-athlete black students.

At Boulder, 2 percent of students are black. Maybe that will change now that race, or at least the great black athlete, has become a focus. McCartney’s remarks come as the University is about to name its first black head coach, a move lobbied for over the course of years by McCartney.

The full Post quote:

“You can’t win without the great black athlete,” McCartney told The Denver Post. “They can’t say this. I couldn’t have said it if I’d taken over. What I couldn’t say is they don’t have enough of them. The way we got good before was we recruited the great black athlete.”

Can we have a great university without “the great black student?” Can we have a great university without “great black scientists, philosophy students, historians?”

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Scot Kersgaard has been managing editor of a political newspaper, editor and co-owner of a ski town newspaper, executive editor of eight high-tech magazines (where he worked with current Apple CEO Tim Cook), deputy press secretary to a U.S. Senator, and an outdoors columnist at the Rocky Mountain News. He has an English degree from the University of Washington. He was awarded a fellowship to study internet journalism at the University of Maryland's Knight Center for Specialized Journalism. He was student body president in college. He spends his free time hiking and skiing.