THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, December 2, 1995 TAG: 9512020706
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Tom Robinson
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
OK, I can see how it was a harmless idea and how their hearts were in the right place and how the picture doesn't mean what it looks like and . . . and
What were they thinking?
What kind of light bulbs went off in the brains of Christopher Newport University women's basketball coach Cathy Parson and sports information director Wayne Block when they chose such a tasteless cover for their media guide?
I'll describe the photo. There are 11 women wearing blue and silver uniforms. They are holding 11 guns.
Some sort of rifle. Nine are pointed at the camera, or directly at the guide's recipients. Some readers will be reporters. Most will be high school coaches and recruits, many who surely live with the specter of firearms creeping into neighborhoods and corridors where they don't belong, where they wreak only ill.
Now, unless the NRA is a sugar daddy of Newport's Division III athletic program or the women's basketball team is also the women's skeet shooting team, I'd say a public relations disaster is brewing.
Block agrees. But he admits he and Parson didn't realize it until last week, when Parson's sister pointed out the ugly overtones.
(Not to mention, which I will, the complete incongruity between basketball and guns under any circumstances, symbolic or otherwise. It's among the reasons the Washington Bullets are changing their nickname.)
Newport's women are clutching rifles to illustrate the slogan ``CNU's Arsenal Armed and Dangerous.'' It all is supposed to convey the proficiency of Newport's skills, Block says.
``It was intended to say we have a powerful team, not to indicate that there are guns in the school,'' he says, sheepishly noting that the rifles are fakes on loan from Newport's ROTC program.
Parson says if the cover is objectionable, it's because of an obsession with political correctness.
``If you look at it from the standpoint of the '90s you can say it was a bad idea,'' Parson says. ``If you look at it in terms of shooting and scoring, it's an awesome idea. ... It says we're sharpshooters. It's a travesty that we can't hear that and that alone.''
She and Block have relented, however. A new cover photo has been ordered, as well as a replacement for an inside shot that also features rifle-toting women, eight of whom are from South Hampton Roads.
Of the original press run of 500 books, probably 450 are still in the school's hands, Block says. They cost around $1,100 to produce, he says, and the athletic department will dip into a contingency fund to redo the pictures.
``I don't know yet what it will cost, but we feel like it's worth it,'' Block says.
It's more than worth it.
Despite their defenses, I'm still having trouble getting beyond how Parson, Block and the players, according to Block, all thought a menacing pose with guns was cool. How not a single person's mental alarm blared uncontrollably when the notion was introduced.
I guess it's been a lesson. Hope it has, anyway, as in the journalistic racket where, political correctness aside, most of us have come to realize that nothing in a game is ``fatal.'' And that the rightfielder does not ``gun down'' a runner when he throws him out.
A sense of humor and irony is appreciated. But life is too serious these days, in too many ways, to make sport of a truly deadly subject. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo of the cover of Christopher Newport women's
basketball media guide...
by CNB