Saga ugly for school officials
By JASON WHITLOCK
Columnist
Jason Whitlock
"In these dicey political times, can you fire two high-ranking black administrators for the stupidity of their wives and leave in place the white basketball coach who recruited and coddled the primary source of embarrassment?
We should know any day now.
We'll also learn whether the University of Missouri places more value on its integrity and reputation than it does on filling the new $75 million basketball arena that's scheduled to open next season.
The Ricky Clemons saga is just about ready to reach its crescendo. And the primary plot line is now squarely in focus: race, money and ambition.
Elson Floyd, the University of Missouri systems president, and Ed Stewart, a Missouri associate athletic director, are in jeopardy of losing their jobs because their wives repeatedly carried on three-way, racially charged, jail-house phone conversations with Slick Ricky. The calls, like most jail-house phone conversations, were taped.
The transcripts of the conversations — some of which have been published in the Columbia Daily Tribune — are highly embarrassing and somewhat offensive. They definitely portray Missouri administrators in an unflattering, back-stabbing light. And the printed conversations paint Carmento Floyd and Amy Stewart as uneducated and racially insensitive.
Can Elson Floyd and Ed Stewart survive?
The Clemons saga has just been too embarrassing. If you remember, while he was supposed to be locked up at a halfway house — Ricky got in trouble for a domestic dispute with his then-girlfriend Jessica Bunge — he wrecked on an ATV while celebrating the Fourth of July at the Floyd household. Ricky suffered severe injuries and spent numerous days in the hospital recovering before being sent back to serve the rest of his time in the joint.
Perhaps out of concern for his injuries, perhaps out of concern for the Floyds' legal liability in Ricky's ATV wreck, Carmento Floyd and her friend Amy Stewart struck up a phone-pal relationship with Lil' Ricky. Carmento and Amy offered the Rickster motherly and big-sisterly advice tinged with a dash of bigotry.
Carmento told Ricky to quit dating white women, and Amy gleefully shared that the “crackers” at the Hearnes Center “be” shaking out of concern over the investigation into whether Clemons received improper cash benefits from Missouri coaches.
I'm sure Elson and Ed be shaking today.
Their loud-mouthed wives may have cost them plum jobs. Elson Floyd has tried desperately to distance himself from his wife's comments. He claims that he told his wife to quit talking to Ricky. He claims that Amy Stewart fabricated the story she told Ricky about Elson Floyd declaring that “we all” leaving Columbia as soon as possible.
The fact that Elson Floyd can be heard answering one of Ricky's collect calls from jail shoots large holes in Floyd's defense. It seems logical, to me, that the Floyds would want to maintain contact with a young person with an axe to grind and a wild imagination who was injured on their property. It's a good business decision.
A business decision might be the only thing that saves Elson and Ed. As much as Missouri curators might love to fire Elson and Ed today, they might have to hold off a year so they can hang on to their basketball coach, Quin Snyder.
You dump Floyd and Stewart — two black men — and it would be difficult to retain Snyder, the white coach who Clemons claims wanted to adopt him. Right now, Floyd and Stewart are guilty of marrying women who made them look foolish. That's a crime we all have committed at some level. Snyder is the guy who brought the Weapon of Mass Embarrassment to campus.
But Snyder has a team ranked in the top five, a top-shelf recruiting class on the way and a new arena to play in next season.
My prediction: Ed Stewart gets whacked this week. Elson Floyd gets a year to find another job. Quin has to find an assistant coach to be a scapegoat. And it's business as usual at Old Mizzou."
Published in the Kansas City Star.
I'm a Jayhawk fan, but I do feel bad for the Mizzou program.
