South Carolina women's basketball coach Dawn Staley on Friday jumped on the Rachel Richardson race victimization bandwagon. Even though police shot holes in Richardson's story that BYU fans threatened and racially harassed her during last week's volleyball match against Duke, South Carolina has canceled its Nov. 6 season opener against BYU.
That game was scheduled to be played Nov. 6 in Charleston, S.C. -- not Provo, Utah, where Richardson lied about racial harassment.
"As a head coach, my job is to do what’s best for my players and staff,” Staley said in a press release. “The incident at BYU has led me to reevaluate our home-and-home, and I don’t feel that this is the right time for us to engage in this series.”
Under Staley's guidance, South Carolina won national championships in 2017 and 2022, and compiled a gaudy 93-8 record over the past three seasons.
South Carolina athletic director Ray Tanner also bought into the big lie:
“Dawn and I have discussed her thoughts on the situation,” Tanner said. “I support Dawn and all of our coaches in their right to schedule games and opponents that are best for their teams.”
And these people are supposed to be educators? They can't -- or won't -- admit the police in Provo conducted a thorough investigation of Richardson's lies and dismissed them as false and unsubstantiated by watching video of the volleyball match.
South Carolina had scheduled basketball games against BYU this year and next, but now those games are off because of false pretenses.
CNN also swallowed the big lie, hook, line and sinker. Wayne Sterling's story completely ignore the police investigation in a story headlined: "South Carolina basketball team cancels BYU games over racist harassment at volleyball match."
Sterling wrote, "Richardson said BYU officials did not act quick enough to stop the racist harassment she and other Black players were subject to during a match last week. Richardson tweeted that she and some of her teammates 'were targeted and racially heckled throughout the entirety of the match. The slurs and comments grew into threats which caused us to feel unsafe.' ”
Brigham Young didn't help its own cause either. The conservative Mormon school admitted guilt before the facts were in, banned a fan from the campus for life and also moved fans to the upper deck during its subsequent match against Utah State.
Despite all the clamor about non-existent racism at BYU, the KKK is not setting up camp in Provo. The next thing that remains to be seen is whether or not Brigham Young becomes a pariah throughout the NCAA.