Free Press sports columnist Drew Sharp thinks Detroit's school Emergency Manager Darnell Earley blew it big time
Early reversed a decision by Detroit PSL director Alvin Ward that had King High School forfeiting the league's championship game this Friday at Ford Field because of a brawl it got into with Cody High School. The forfeiture would have meant that Cass Tech automatically won the game.
But student and parental pressure resulted in Earley overturning the ruling and deciding to let the game go on.
Sharp writes:
The Detroit Public Schools dropped the ball.
There was an opportunity for a stern lesson on the merits of restraint. There was a chance to reach impressionable teenaged boys too often motivated by false machismo.
The Public School League initially banished top-ranked King from the city football championship Friday night for its participation in a postgame melee last week against Cody. The action, handed down by PSL athletic director Alvin Ward, was extreme, offering collective consequences for individual transgressions. But it was the right call. More importantly, it was the right lesson.
But the DPS caved Tuesday, failing miserably in its primary objective of molding better, more responsible, more mentally disciplined young people.
Drew goes on later to say:
And we constantly complain why young African-American men in our large urban cities can so easily justify violent retaliation — and how the few talented enough to create larger opportunities through athletic prowess believe those skills should protect them from the rules of respectful behavior that govern everybody else.
