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Duke, BYU, and volleyball

It would be hard to find two college athletics programs that spur as much emotion as Duke and BYU. They are two schools that, for a long list of reasons, sports fans either hate with a visceral passion or cheer for relentlessly, even if they have absolutely no particular affiliation to the school. In the early 1990’s, Sports Illustrated dubbed BYU the most hated team in college football, and included the article subhead, “clean, sober, and insufferable.” Duke has enjoyed similar distain, especially towards their perennially outstanding men’s basketball program. While each school has its ardent supporters, they also attract an extensive cohort of fans who revel in their defeat. Perhaps best put, when it comes to both Duke and BYU athletics, it seems everyone is forced to pick a side.

That angst was thrown into overdrive last week after news about a volleyball match between the two teams at BYU, where according to Duke volleyball player Rachel Richardson, who is black, a BYU fan repeatedly yelled racial slurs at her when she was serving and that, according to Richardson, she and her African American teammates were racially heckled throughout the match. She also said that BYU coaches and officials were made aware of the situation, and no one took steps to stop it. A police officer did go stand in the student section near where the person accused of heckling Duke was standing. But otherwise, the game continued.

That story put college volleyball on the front pages, one with fairly obvious story arcs and vilains. The public by and large condemned BYU for allowing this to happen and connected this transgression to a much larger storyline around racism, BYU, and Mormonism. In essence, to many, this served not only as another example of abhorrent fan behavior, but also a microcosm of a religion and its flagship university. And, oddly enough, made Duke an unusual public favorite. The fallout continued with BYU banning that particular fan for life and the head coach of South Carolina Women’s Basketball Dawn Staley cancelling her teams upcoming game at BYU. Statements were released by all parties, commitment to doing the hard work were made, and justice would be served.

That is, until BYU days later released the results of their investigation of that evening, which included a full review of all video recordings of the game and interviews with approximately 50 people in the area of the alleged behavior, including both Duke and BYU athletic personnel. And according to their investigation, they found no evidence of any racial harassment at the game. They released a statement that explained the process, reminded all they do not tolerate racism in any form, and so on. Duke then released their own statement that came far short of accepting BYU’s findings, simply insisting their athletes are role models and they too as a university will not tolerate racism. Twitter then exploded, and news organizations reported the plot twist, although some might suggest with less zeal that with the initial story.

There is way, way, too much to unpackage here, given the number of lightning rods from this single event. As a baseline, we should accept the long history of racism by fans at sporting events, something European soccer has fought for decades. So the idea that someone might shout racial slurs at a sporting event is both believable and sadly common. We should also acknowledge that journalistically, parts of this story didn’t fully add up and should have been checked. For all of us who regularly attend college sporting events, it does seem odd that if such chants were yelled so frequent and audible to both teams, someone would have stopped the match – a coach, official, player. So more scrutiny of the story was likely warranted.

But really, the clear narrative here is that while we like to imagine sport as a space that leads us towards a more just society, it clear that the challenges of the outside world are well contested on the field and court. And while those of us who played sports fancy the locker room as a place free of racial divide, we’re still some distance from that reality. And even though BYU fans appear not to have done what they were accused of, it’s also clear that lots of people believe that it did. And that is not a condemnation of BYU, but rather a recognition of all of us.

It does seem this moment will pass, and BYU and Duke will take what they will from the affair. As for me, I’ll simply go back to hating them both.

Keith Strudler is the director of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him on twitter at @KeithStrudler

The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.

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