Here's an article on what was said
I listened to the press conference today, and as soon as I heard him say it, I said to myself, "this might get him in a little trouble." I don't think he meant harm by what he was saying, but at the same time, we live in a day and age where you have to be very careful about the words you use. When you're in the public eye you have to be even more careful.
Glad he got out in front of it and apologized.
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Is the bad statement about Jehova's witnesses or about hell?
enlighten me, I may have missed the specific word(S).
My take is that Coach's attempt at humor was basically "Jehovah's Witnesses aren't good at basketball."
I don't know man. Charlie Murphy did struggle against Prince and his squad
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Game...blouses
In Charlie's defense I think he was still trying to figure out how to clean-up the couch.
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So, the folks upset are trying to argue that the fictional jehovah's witness all-star team would be better than the UF Gators Men's Basketball team?
I don't think they have a solid argument.
What I got from it was that it was a joke about an all star team for a specific religion. So almost like saying the Catholic All Star team. For me, I don't think it's that big of a deal but you're treading on thin ice when you poke fun at a specific religion. 🤷🏾♂️
Except a Catholic all star team would have Kobe and Stockton in the backcourt and be coached by Pat Riley and we would get fucking waxed.
And Jehovah's Witnesses are specifically discouraged from focusing much on sports so as to not divert attention from their faith. So it's actually a fair comment backed by the church's own doctrine.
To me its like saying they played the all girls catholic schools basketball team but I really dont see what the fuss is about.
Isn't this the equivalent of saying a team is playing the Little Sisters of the Poor, which is the same as saying blank ain't played nobody???
Roy Williams uses this kind of analogy all the damn time and I haven't once heard anyone demand him to apologize for it
He should've just trash talked Florida.
He should've let Wyatt Teller do the trash talking.
Strike that... Trash Walking... Wyatt doesn't need to say anything to get his point across.
Should have said the Washington Generals.
But the Generals are due
Should have said Hickory High
And the Politically Correct Police log another suspect in their millions of volumes. YAWN.
In the days after my dad died, a Jehovah came to my house to "offer condolences" and then badger my family about joining their "religion". They troll the newspaper to see who has died and then visit the greiving at their weakest point to convert them.
Another time, I had to pull into a kingdom hall parking lot because of a flat tire. As I was changing the tire, a group of them came to the church, saw me changing the tire, and kept on going. Not a one of them offered help.
And yet they still pester people with their letters (in the COVID era) about joining them.
Give 'em hell Mike.
This is the dumbest shit I've seen in quite some time. I hate what society has become that you have to apologize for something stupid like that
one of the refs must be a JW
Well, don't denigrate people and there's nothing to apologize for. I'm not a JW or a fan of theirs, but saying sorry after you insult someone who hasn't done any harm to you is the least that you can do. That's being polite in society.
I'm sorry but MY didn't denigrate anyone, he didn't like the question he got from a media person - and it could be interpreted that the media person denigrated the Gators. He asked if MY thought this was a step in a process or does he focus on each game. MY responded the way he did, because he thought the question didn't respect his opponent. He was showing respect for his opponent!
This is the equivalent of a solution looking for a problem - because that what the "Politically Correct Police" do. They wait for things like this and pounce to make it a problem - its ridiculous. The local media certainly went off on it last night so they had a sports story to fill time with - Freakin ridiculous.
If MY got ahead of it before the "Politically Correct Police" started their crap, then he knew it would happen and got in front of it, because these days you have to - good grief, some parts of today's society are so over the top.
I know right?! If we can't lightly-insult religious minority groups, what are we even doing here?!
Do you see how dumb that sounds?
What was the exact insult? Inversely, if Mike Young was asked how a group of JW kids looked on the court and he said "well, they don't look as scary as our opponent Friday", is that an insult?
The insult is that a group of Jehovah Witnesses would not be good at basketball. Is it the most devastating or hate-filled metaphor? No, of course not, but it was unnecessary to his point and could be twisted, so he issued an apology.
And to answer your weird, never-gonna-happen scenario; if he were talking about a literal team and comparing them to Florida's team, yes it would be different. Saying Syracuse is worse than Gonzaga is not an insult to Syracuse, although their players might disagree.
So it is an insult because a church league all star team might be better than Florida? We don't know for sure since we haven't seen this fictional team play Florida? It is a reach at best. I am ok with MY trying to get in front of it but I am not ok with any form of media slandering him for it.
Did anyone actually complain? The apology was issued really soon after the statement- like 4 hours after the press conference. Only people closely following VT beat writers on twitter in the middle of a work day would've seen it at that point.
I don't think it is established that anyone asked Mike to apologize.
I agree. I don't really think there was any real outrage over this. Perhaps Mike decided to make the statement on his own because he thought it was inappropriate or didn't reflect his values. A mea culpa if you will.
I think he realized after the fact that he inadvertently referenced religion which is a no no in general. I don't think anything he said was malicious or actually hurt any feelings unless there is a great JW team that I don't know of that could beat Florida. He backtracked after regretting his analogy choice (not the meaning or intent) and it seems that the apology may have drawn more attention than ignoring it would have.
There wasn't any real outrage. If there was any gripe with him, it still was in the court of public opinion. I'm not aware of many major sports outlets (TMZ sports is meh) or radio shows that got ahold of it, so yet again, I applaud him for getting out ahead of it. I cringed a little when I heard it, if just because I know that our culture is very attentive to poor phrasing.
It's like you've never seen Twitter. Expressing outrage at inoffensive comments is what they do.
How Twitter works:
Me:
"I prefer mangoes to oranges..."
Random Person:
"So basically what you're saying is that you hate oranges? You also failed to mention pineapples, bananas and grapefruits. Educate yourself."
I've heard twitter described as a roving mob in search of a cause. Seems accurate.
The only outrage is from people outraged that he apologized. This is a nothing story on all sides.
TMZ headline: "VIRGINIA TECH HOOPS COACH TRASHES JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES... Apologizes Hours Later"
Sue them for libel, Mike! /s
Such a garbage headline
"TMZ Sports" is such a joke. I @ them as they are the definition of click-bait, trash content, fake news.
TMZ Sports is a real thing???
wow...
Unfortunately... it's a Twitter account with ~200k followers. Twitter is the supreme cesspool of internet cringe, fake-news, and depravity. I stepped away from Twitter around 2014 but for some reason, it has risen to the top of social media in my opinion.
The more I hear about Twitter the more I think it should be destroyed to save the human race.
Twitter doesn't make the human race have bad opinions, but it does make it easier to share bad opinions.
Yeah he didn't even say anything bad about JWs to be offensive...just that they were not playing against them so reach hard on that one my friends.
As someone who has never had a positive experience with JW....
Should MY have said it in 2021? No
Is it worthy of a light apology? Couldn't hurt
Do I care if JW are still hurt after the his apology? ABSOLUTELY NOT
Given what I know personally from what several JWs have told me directly, there is a nearly 0% chance that any of them would have seen/found this interview, and it's just as unlikely that they would be looking at the clickbait sites that would make a fuss over it.
CMY is a good man and probably realized it "could" be taken poorly and apologized. Done. Move along.
The Amish would have been a 0% chance. I don't think they play basketball either.
Growing up in southeastern PA, I can certify that the Amish definitely play sports. Baseball/softball and volleyball are the big ones, and hockey for the kids in Lancaster. Basketball is pretty big for the Amish communities in the Midwest (Indiana). They also play the shit out of cornhole.
They see it more as a thing for children to do though, it is frowned upon for adults to play sports at a certain point.
Funny thing, my first 2 years after graduating I did project analysis/budgeting for Verizon on fiber/FIOS/cell projects in that part of PA. The state required that the Amish had powered refrigeration if they wanted to continue selling dairy, so the communities updated their rules. You would show up on their farms to negotiate projects, and their houses and outbuildings had no power, but then you would walk into their barn where they had to have power per state law and they were decked out with flat screens, man caves, etc etc.
Didn't know. Thanks.
Same thing with Mennonites in Harrisonburg/Dayton area, those guys are actually really good at sports particularly baseball and are very world aware. Also ditto on the decked out barns, some of their barns are nicer than my house, I think that's just dairying in general though because some farms are very very bad.
I feel like he wanted to say "Saint Mary's School for the Deaf and Blind" and tried to be more PC and it still backfired.
I wonder would it be un-PC to say "we're not playing against the church league all stars, this is the University of Florida" or something? If that example would be okay, I don't see why saying JW is bad
Reminds me of one of my favorite movies
Airplane! always gets a leg.
Good rule of thumb: just say UVA instead.
Now my wife wants a T-shirt that says "Jehovah's Witness All Star Team" on the front and "if the court is a rockin', don't come a knockin'" on the back.
She also works with at least 1 JW and if that person is an average JW, they'll never hear about it because they don't really follow competitive sports.
He should have never apologized for that.
Should have just said Pi Kappa Alpha.