Employment & Legals

team is wrong.

“We’re not bar fighters,” stressed the coach. “We’re not thugs. We’re not monkeys. We’re not street fighters.” She strongly advised the group to stop misjudging her players. “If you really know them, if you really know them…you would think differently.”

Watts pointed out, “When you look at who’s covering college sports and who’s covering women’s basketball, it’s already skewed. So it would make sense that is how the stories get reported.”

Will double standards ever leave our society? We asked this of Watts, the mother of a young Black daughter. “I think it is really important showing up as our authentic selves as Black women in whatever spaces that we’re in,” surmised Watts. “I think more importantly being able to call out behavior when we see it.

“I’m hopeful that we are at a time where we can use social media..to have your voice be heard or to be able to reject some of this negativity that comes our way. But it’s a battle.”

Charles Hallman welcomes reader comments at challman@ spokesman-recorder.com.

Longtime opponents of college players getting paid contend that a college scholarship is their pay. But unlike nonplaying students on scholarship who can work during the school year, college athletes are not allowed to do so. Therefore, NIL can now give the players some walk-around money. The panelists expressed their fears that student-athletes can be vulnerable to fi-