Air Force coach shoots himself in the foot

America at Large: The poet Heinrich Heine actually had a 19th century Teutonic autocrat and not the head football coach at the Air Force Academy in mind when he wrote "Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid." But you get the point.

And since you'd have to say that the Air Force Academy had already been experiencing the worst millennium in its history even before its coach got into the act, you can't blame it all on Fisher DeBerry.

Three years ago the Air Force removed four top officials - two generals and two full colonels - from their posts at the Colorado Springs institution after reports that dozens of women cadets had been raped and the academy had systematically attempted to cover up the scandal, including what was described as "intimidation and punishment of the victims by supervising officers".

Two years ago an investigation revealed widespread cheating on examinations administered to incoming freshmen. By service academy standards, honour code violations are traditionally considered far more serious than rape. Over half the first-year cadets admitted to honour code violations.

Last year the college found itself under fire for what was perceived as widespread religious intolerance if not outright discrimination. Evangelical Christianity was apparently so firmly entrenched that Jews, Muslims and even Catholics felt threatened.

A report commissioned by a civil-liberties group called Americans United for Separation of Church and State concluded that "both the specific violations and the promotion of a culture of official religious intolerance are pervasive, systematic and evident at the very highest levels of the academy's command structure".

The Air Force was still in the midst of investigating this latter charge last November when the bible-thumping 67-year-old DeBerry erected a locker-room banner proclaiming, "I am a Christian first and last . . . I am a member of Team Jesus Christ". And that wasn't even the dumbest thing DeBerry has done in the past 12 months. Last Saturday Air Force got itself thumped 48-10 by Texas Christian University in a conference game, putting the Falcons in jeopardy of enduring just their fourth losing season in DeBerry's 22-year tenure.

DeBerry's immediate response was measured and, given the circumstances, we thought, restrained: "They handed us a good old-fashioned butt-kicking," said the coach after the game.

Given three days to digest the loss, DeBerry then proceeded to bungle his way into a national controversy by blaming the loss on . . . black players. Not his own. TCU's.

"It's very obvious to me the other day that the other team had a lot more Afro-Americans than we did, and they ran a lot faster than we did," said DeBerry, carefully edging his foot toward his mouth.

Those in the audience were already squirming in their seats. You'd better shut up, now, coach.

"It just seems to be that way, that Afro-American kids can run very, very well," DeBerry felt compelled to elaborate. "That doesn't mean that Caucasian kids and other descents can't run, but it's very obvious to me they run extremely well."

When it was suggested his remarks might be construed as racial profiling, DeBerry refused to back off.

"Their defence had 11 Afro-American kids on their team, and they were a very, very good defensive football team," he said.

"That's exactly what I was talking about."

Oddsmaker Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder got fired from his television job at CBS for attributing the alleged superiority of black athletes to the legacy of slavery. "The black is bred to be the better athlete," claimed Snyder. "This goes all the way back to the Civil War when the plantation owner would breed his big buck to his big woman so that he would have a big black kid."

Fuzzy Zoeller cost himself millions in endorsements in 1997 when he warned Tiger Woods not to serve "fried chicken or collard greens or whatever the hell they serve" at the following year's Masters Dinner.

Former Dodgers general manager Al Campanis became a pariah when he said on American television that "blacks may not have some of the necessities to be, let's say, a field manager or perhaps a general manager".

In their defence, Fuzzy, Campanis, and Jimmy the Greek undoubtedly spoke before they thought, and the unfortunate words came tumbling out. DeBerry, alas, can't pass off his enlistment in this pantheon as a spur-of-the-moment slip, since he had three days to prepare his address. DeBerry might, and probably will, try to say his ill-considered pronouncement wasn't intended as a racist screed but as a plea for minority recruiting at the academy. Maybe it was, but it's hard to imagine a black athlete rushing to sign up for the USAFA after hearing that.

Within a matter of hours, as DeBerry's remarks began to circulate over the airwaves, Lt Col Laurent Fox issued a statement on behalf of the AFA administration, noting that "The senior leadership of the academy is aware of media reports about coach DeBerry's comments on minority recruiting. We cannot comment further until we have a chance to review all of the reports, the coach's actual statements and to speak with the coach personally." Yeah? And then?