When we ran the story “Football players arrested in drug bust” in the Feb. 25 issue of The East Texan, we expected the football team to dislike it. What we did not expect was for the team to retaliate by taking all the copies of the Texan on campus and disposing of them, an act Head Coach Guy Morriss called “the best team building exercise we’ve ever done.”
Perhaps, as an encore, the team could try stealing firearms from NRA members so they can violate the amendments of the Bill of Rights in order.
Coach Morriss seems to think the way to stop criticism of his program is the same way you stop opponents on the football field: by hitting them in the mouth. The problem is, this is not a game, and just as Morriss seems to think he does not have to play by rules laid out in the U.S. Constitution, we in turn do not have to let petty bully tactics interfere with what we feel is our duty: to report on what happens at this campus, both good and bad.
With the amount of money being funneled into the athletic department now, the students paying the bills deserve to know how those funds are being used. If a team performs well, people want to know that. If players on one of those teams are arrested for allegedly selling drugs out of their dorm room, the people paying for them to be here, the students, want to know that too.
The East Texan is not out to get the football team or any other organization on campus. We are proud of our school, and we want to have teams we can believe in and root for. If Coach Morriss will worry less about “team building exercises” and more on running a quality program, perhaps that dream can still be achieved.