Things have not been the brightest surrounding U of I Athletics as of late. Though several of the teams have been remarkably great on the field of play (baseball, tennis, golf) — the Illini Football program has been under fire, and more recently, Illini Women’s Basketball.
Reading “Coach Bollant has systematically tried to create racial tension among the team.” is not exactly the best thing to see, and there’s more below.
In response to the allegations — the News-Gazette has published some letters from parents of players.
UPDATE: 10:45 a.m.
So the News-Gazette isn’t allowing us to publish all of the letters as we originally did (I mean, I get it, but this is the internet, people), so if you want to support people who treat their readers like bathroom stalls with gloryholes, go click over there.
PUBLISHER UPDATE: 10:08 p.m.
Despite the fact that we’ve linked through to the News-Gazette site, and credited them with what they published (something they’ve never done for us, not ever, not once), legal counsel for the local daily paper has asked us to please remove the screenshots of letters that they didn’t write and re-direct you to their website, where you can read them there. That’s where they also sell advertising via Google ads while publishing mugshots of unconvicted citizens, interrogate the recently bereaved, and endorse the dissolution of unions.
Bomani Jones from ESPN also sent this out on Twitter yesterday afternoon: