Glory Road leads to many lessons

[thedrifter]

January 18, 2006
Glory Road leads to many lessons
By RANDY RORRER
THE ROAR

I didn't learn that I was

colorblind until I was taking a test for a Marines recruiter.

Picking a number out of a circle of colored dots? It's harder than the FCAT when you're colorblind. It's one of the few tests I've ever failed.

I guess I owe the condition to genetics.

I learned that I was colorblind when it came to sports long before then.

There was a story in the small West Virginia town I grew up in about a black family that had moved in one day and had been run out of town by the end of the week. Some of the townfolk seemed proud of it.

When I asked my father why, he couldn't offer a good explanation.

You see my father, who was also a sportswriter, often invited athletes (black and white) over to our humble home for cookouts.

My brothers, sisters and I marveled at the size of these athletes and how many hot dogs and hamburgers they could put away.

That they were black or white was insignificant to my father's five star-struck kids. They were all our heroes.

Dad often let us three boys tag along with him, when he went to cover sports.

I'm sure we were influenced by the fact he treated white and black players with equal respect.

It seemed natural to us -- another inherited trait.

We didn't judge players by the color of their skin, but by whether they could score touchdowns or shoot baskets.

That was in the mid-1960s, about the same time Don Haskins was making history at Texas Western (now UTEP) by winning the 1966 national basketball championship with an all-black starting lineup.

The story has been captured in the movie "Glory Road," that was released last week.

TRAILBLAZER

Little did I know then what a ground-breaking experiment Haskins was making in El Paso, Texas.

While other schools played few -- if any -- black players, Haskins was forced to build his budget-challenged program with black players nobody else was willing to recruit.

Glory Road paints a compelling picture of what the social climate was then and how a select group of black and white players came together to overcome hate and bigotry.

The movie glosses over some of the details of how Haskins constructed his program, but it moves along at a quick pace and delivers a goose-bump-inducing ending.

If you're a sports fan, you should see it. If you're a basketball fan, you need to see it. By the way, stick around for the commentary with the credits.

RARE MOMENT

Glory Road makes us remember a special group of men that forced a change in the way people perceived a sport.

Texas Western did for basketball what Jackie Robinson did for baseball.

Haskins' team proved black players could not only play, they could win. Other teams were forced to go after the best players (black or white) in order to compete.

Isn't it bizarre that anybody would approach it any differently?

Things have changed a lot since then, and hopefully they will continue to change to a point where nobody questions the ability of players to win or think based on the color of their skin.

It's time for us all to be colorblind.

randy.rorrer@news-jrnl.com

Ellie

[kentmitchell]

I was a sportswriter--still doing it in retirement for my former paper and on a dot.com--for more than 35 years. I NEVER took a player/players home for dinner. Unprofessional. Besides, the NCAA would penalize a school if something like that happened. And I'll bet if the "Roar" wrote in a column that he had athletes over to his home for dinner that the paper would take some action against him, too.

[junker316]

I believe deeply that Race, Color, Religon and so on has nothing to do with who should get respect or not. If a person rates it then they receive it. If they don't then they don't receive it. I did find out though that Promotions and other work related issues don't get dealt out the same way. Everything has to do with Race, Color, Religon, and Gender. Nothing to do with who is able to do the job the best or who is capable of completing the missions the best. I was informed of this recently, and I truely believed that the Corps was different and it isn't in this matter, that all this stopped in the late eighties. It hasn't. I see other getting promoted because they are female or of another race than some-one else and what ethnic groups are needed for the promotional MOS. Not what the Marine has done or hasn't done. Not the knowledge in their brain housing group. And not if they are compitant and capable of completing the mission better and safer and easier than any-one else. This was all brought to my attention by a Master Guns after I asked the question " how long did it take you before you were promoted to MGYSGT "? He explained to me, as a minority, how the real promotion system works and how it doesn't. He told me that he has nothing to lose since he reached the highest pinnicle possible for him and that he wished to share it some-one else so that maybe it could be changed. Colorblindness would be nice. If it were for all things. Not just because some EO people decide what percent of which race and gender should be in which positions of which rank.