Air Force coach says school needs more black players to compete

Air Force coach says school needs more black players to compete


COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - Air Force football coach Fisher DeBerry said Tuesday his coaching staff needed to recruit more African-American athletes, reiterating a comment he made Monday while talking about the state of his struggling program.

Academy officials released a statement Tuesday night saying they would review the remarks.

"The senior leadership of the academy is aware of media reports about Coach DeBerry's comments on minority recruiting," academy spokesman Lt. Col. Laurent Fox said. "We can not comment further until we have a chance to review all of the reports, the coach's actual statements and to speak with the coach personally."

Talking Monday about the reasons for his team's 3-5 start and the possibility of consecutive losing seasons for the first time since he became coach in 1984, DeBerry, 67, noted his team's lack of speed compared to Texas Christian University, which beat Air Force, 48-10, last Saturday.

"You don't see many minority athletes in our program," DeBerry said.

Asked during his Tuesday news conference to clarify those remarks, DeBerry responded:

"It's very obvious to me the other day that the other team had a lot more Afro-American players than we did, and they ran a lot faster than we did. It just seems to be that way, that Afro-American kids can run very, very well. That doesn't mean that Caucasian kids and other descents can't run, but it's very obvious to me they run extremely well. Their defense had 11 Afro-American kids on their team, and they were a very, very good defensive football team. That's exactly what I was talking about."

Though the academy itself recruits minorities, DeBerry's comments could be construed as controversial because they seem to equate race with athletic ability.

Asked if he believed it was wrong to make such comments, DeBerry said:

"Do I believe it's wrong? I just want to recruit speed. We need to find speed as much as anything. The black athlete seems to have, statistically, program to program to program, seems to have an edge as far as the speed is concerned. That's got nothing to do with anything except ability."

DeBerry came under criticism last year for his role in the academy's discussion of religious tolerance. Last season, DeBerry was forced to remove a Christian banner from the team's locker room and underwent training on religious tolerance.

This season, for the first time since he became coach, DeBerry has not led his team in pre- and post-game prayers because of guidelines on religious expression established by the Air Force in late August.


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