Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Iowa Football: Updates and Information Regarding The Current Discrimination Lawsuit

Episode Date: April 27, 2022

In today's episode I sit down and talk about updates regarding the current discrimination lawsuit being held against the Iowa Hawkeye's Football program. Recently there has been some new developments that have came out including 4 new counts against members of the Iowa Hawkeyes' football coaching staff. There are not very many content creators and media personnel discussing this but it is a very important topic of discussion that has to do with Iowa Hawkeye's sports so I felt as though it is my responsibility as the host of the Locked On Hawkeye's Podcast to report on the latest information regarding the lawsuit.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKED15,” and you’ll get 15% off your next order.BetOnlineBetOnline.net has you covered this season with more props, odds and lines than ever before. BetOnline – Where The Game Starts!Rock AutoAmazing selection. Reliably low prices. All the parts your car will ever need. Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you.Athletic GreensAthletic Greens is going to give you a FREE 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/COLLEGE. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back Hawkeye Nation to another episode of the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast, your daily podcast covering your Iowa Hawkeyes on the Locked on Podcast Network. I want to thank you all for making the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast your very first listen every single day. You can find the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast for free wherever you get your podcasts at, and also on YouTube by searching Locked on Hawkeyes. for free wherever you get your podcasts at and also on YouTube by searching Locked on Hawkeyes. Before we get into stuff today, I want to talk about a couple of tweets that the Locked on Hawkeyes page was tagged in over the course of yesterday.

I was informed that I was pronouncing Spencer Petras' name wrong. I apologize. I was pronouncing it as Petras. I am not great with name pronunciations, so that is 100% on me. I apologize. I was pronouncing it as Petrus. I am not great with name pronunciations, so that is 100% on me. I apologize. And I believe the other one had to do with why we have not started doing YouTube again yet. Again, that's on me. The transition from Andrew to myself has been a little bit more complicated than I would have liked it to be, from Andrew to myself has been a little bit more complicated than I would have liked it to be.

But we will be getting back into YouTube very, very soon, hopefully over the course of this week. As I mentioned, I have a lot going on with finals coming up. And as the school year is winding down, I've got a lot on my plate right now. So I'm going to try to get those YouTube videos back up as soon as I can for you all. Once again, I, I really appreciate your continued patience and it's been, it's been a blessing to take over this podcast from my uncle Andrew. Um, and I'm really hoping that I'm going to be able to live up to, uh, you know, what he's, what he's built this podcast, uh, into and what he's made it become today. So once again, I apologize for the delay on posting on YouTube again, but that should be getting started back up here fairly soon. So I'm only going to talk about one thing today. I don't know how long this episode is going to be, but I am going to

get through all of the information that I have planned for today. And the only reason that I'm talking about this is because it hasn't been talked about very widely over podcasts that have to do with Iowa. So I wanted to get on here and kind of give you some information about it. And that is the discrimination lawsuit that has been going around Iowa, excuse me, around the Iowa football program. And I've debated since I took over hosting the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast about whether or not I should talk about this. But in light of recent developments, I've decided to report on some updates regarding the situation.

I'm sure you've already heard about the current racial discrimination lawsuit going on between former Iowa football players and the coaching staff for the Hawkeyes. And if you haven't heard about it, or if you don't know that much about it, basically what's going on is that former players of the Iowa Hawkeyes football team are accusing the Iowa athletic athletic department, as well as several coaches, including Kirk and Brian Ferentz, Chris Doyle, Seth Wallace, and athletic director, Gary Barta of racially motivated discrimination and harassment. And before I get into any other kind of information or updates about the lawsuit, I would like to mention that nothing that I say on today's episode is a representation of my opinion on the situation.

I am only reporting on the information that I have read about the lawsuit and the updates that have recently come out regarding the lawsuit. The information I'm reporting on today has come from an article written by Chad Lesticow, who is a writer for Hawk Central. I really enjoy the rest of his articles. So again, none of this has to do with my opinion on the situation. I don't really have an opinion on the situation. So this is all coming from this article that I've read. So I'm just presenting to you the information that I have been informed of. And before we get into the actual content for today, I want to talk about Athletic Greens. Now, Athletic Greens is one of the best products that

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Kirk Ferentz. The alleged punishment of four hours of community service happened after Ferentz had found out about a private therapy session that Parker had in which he mentioned his concerns with racial discrimination that was happening within the Hawkeyes football program. Ferentz has gone on record saying that Parker was punished because he had been disrespectful towards then-assistant coach Brian Ferentz during practice and that this can be proven from a recording taken by Parker when Ferentz informed him that he would have to participate in the community service. In the last few weeks, said former Iowa football players have added a total of four new counts to the lawsuit, including the one about his disgust with the lack of changes made within the football program since initial allegations were made back in June of 2020. Dismissed six of the eight counts that were presented.

And Kirk Ferentz, AD Gary Barta, and then assistant strength and conditioning coach Raymond Braithwaite were considered to be no longer defendants in the lawsuit. And only three former players, including Javon Foy, Aaron Menz, and Brandon Simon, were included in the statute of limitations for a quote racially hostile environment suit and seven players including Akram Wadley, Marcel Jolly, Darian Cooper, as well as Foy, Menz, Simmons, and Parker were considered eligible for a deprivation of civil rights lawsuit against Doyle as well as Brian Ferentz. Before we get into more information regarding the lawsuit, I want to talk about BetOnline. BetOnline.net is your number one source for all of your betting stats and sports info. Find all of the latest sports developments, league reviews, and news, including this year's basketball playoffs and the start of Major League Baseball season. BetOnline is your continued source for all of your sporting wagering information

from live betting to playoffs to esports and more. Head over to the website today or use your mobile device to learn more about the trends and action. BetOnline, where the game starts. Once again, that is BetOnline.net. So now if we jump back to just a few weeks ago on April 8th, Solomon Simmons had added those four new counts that I mentioned earlier against Seth Wallace, and the complaint mentioned, quote, Wallace discriminated against, bullied, demeaned, and harassed African American football athletes almost daily, end quote.

daily, end quote. But the complaint does not mention any specific examples of Wallace being discriminatory towards those athletes. On Thursday of last week, Solomon Simmons spoke with the Des Moines Register and said that these four new reports pertain to the alleged actions committed by Wallace, Doyle, as well as both Kirk and Brian Ferentz. And a report given by Solomon Simmons and his legal team back in July of 2020 said that the football program had quote, perpetuated racial, excuse me, perpetuated racial or cultural biases and diminished the value of cultural diversity. And quote, Solomon Simmons also said, quote, we just feel like Wallace is one of the bad actors. And so we hope the court gives us the opportunity to add him and then we'll run through the process. And quote, currently the quote unquote plaintiffs are waiting on a ruling from Judge Stephanie Rose

on whether or not these reports can be submitted and used as evidence in the trial. Now, the University of Iowa hired the Hush Blackwell attorney team to investigate these allegations, and they have said that their findings are considered a, quote, independent outside investigation and now claims that, quote, attorney client privilege, excuse me, is the reason for not providing personnel reports regarding the investigation. Bush Blackwell also said that it had provided almost 200,000 pages of, yes, 200,000 pages of documents and reports for the plaintiffs and said on February 10th, quote, plaintiffs have declined to provide any additional information that would show any relationship between the requested personnel files and their claims,

end quote. As far as Kirk Ferentz's involvement in the case as of right now as a defendant, he has not been a part of the lawsuit for the last 11 months. But with Parker's allegations and other plaintiffs attempts to re-sue Ferentz as well as Barta for failure to ensure their staffs were promptly trained and supervised. Ferentz's position as a non-defendant could very well change. It really just depends on everything that comes out, any new information I should say that comes out within the next few days or within the next few weeks. Earlier, I mentioned the recording that Parker had taken of his conversation regarding the community service punishment with Ferentz that he had had after the incident had happened. On Friday, the program's defense team presented word for word details of the conversation that did make it seem as though the punishment was in fact a direct

result of Parker's disrespectful actions towards Brian Ferencz during a practice that was held in preparation for the 2017 Outback Bowl. Parker did admit that he was participating in a kick return drill during that practice that he was performing wrong or incorrectly and it did cause Brian Ferentz to criticize his performance of said kick return drill. Now Parker mentioned that he had thrown a football to Ferentz or at him and pulled him to, quote, do the drill himself, end quote. And on the recording that Parker took during his meeting with Kirk Ferentz, he had said that after throwing the ball to Brian Ferentz, Brian became, quote, Ferenc, Bryan became, quote, disrespectful again and started saying, F me and you know who I am and things like that, end quote. In the recording, Kirk Ferenc did, however, extend an apology

to Parker for not having a special teams coach oversee the kick return drill and asked Parker whether or not he had, quote, both feet in the circle, end quote, during the drill, which was part of performing the drill in the correct way. In response to what Parker said during the meeting, Kirk Ferens said, quote, I understand that you're frustrated, but you can't flip the ball to him and say, here you do it again. I I've never, excuse me. This is still a part of the quote. Again, I've never had that happen in how long I've coached. It's been a while, never had that. That's going to cost you four hours of community service, end quote. According to a statement made about the lawsuit, quote, the Iowa coaching staff made Jonathan feel unimportant, which scared Jonathan. After transferring to a new institution that did not treat African-American players like second-class citizens. Jonathan started loving football again

and his anxiety improved. End quote. Now, as I mentioned, there's so much information that has come out regarding this, especially because all of this started back in June of 2020. And I'm sure that there is more information that will inevitably, you know, come out about the lawsuit. And I will continue to report on that. I do have more information regarding the lawsuit that I'm going to talk about in tomorrow's episode. Today's episode is going to be a little bit shorter. But I really wanted to make sure that the way that I report this is done in the utmost right way, because as I mentioned earlier, not a whole lot of people are talking about this lawsuit on record anyway, whether it be podcasts or in interviews or whatever. So I really want to make

sure that the way I'm presenting the information does not paint anybody in the wrong light. And I really want to make sure that all of the information is correct. So I apologize for the shorter, you know, kind of shorter episode today, but I wanted to break this up into two parts so that nobody, nobody out there listening to the podcast got confused about any of the information. You are more than welcome to hit me up on Twitter, on my personal account, or on the Lockdown Iowa account. If you have any questions about the lawsuit, and I will be more than happy to answer them the best that I possibly can be. Again, I don't know all of the information about the lawsuit other than what I talked about today, but I will get into the rest of this article written by Chad tomorrow. Please, as I mentioned, please feel free to hit me up on Twitter or on Instagram if you have any questions about this.

I want to make sure that people understand this in exactly the right way. And again, none of this has to do with my opinions about this situation. I do not have any opinions about this situation, about the lawsuit anyway. The only opinion that I am willing to extend to you as a content creator and as a person is that, in my opinion, racial discrimination has no place in life, in any part of sports whatsoever, whether it's at the high school level, at the college level, at the professional level, racial discrimination is never okay and it never should happen. And none of this has been proved to be true yet. So obviously whether or not it is proved in either direction, I will mention that on the podcast. As I said earlier, the date for the trial is not until March of 2023.

So that is still quite a long time away. And I am sure that more information about the lawsuit will come out between now and then. But I really just wanted to make sure that everybody understood where I was coming from in reporting this. Um, I'm sure that you heard, uh, during the podcast, uh, today that I, I feel a little bit nervous talking about this, um, because I want to give you guys the utmost truth and, you know, I want, I want to talk about stuff that people want to hear about. So yes, I was a little nervous coming into today's podcast talking about this solely because I know that people have strong opinions about this type of thing. So tomorrow I will explain everything else that I read. And in tomorrow's episode, I will continue to talk about the updates regarding the lawsuit. But for right now, I've run out of time for this episode. Tomorrow's episode will also include other news about Iowa sports, including a story of the day, which I know we didn't get to today. Because I really want to talk about Iowa's baseball team playing Rutgers on the road last weekend. They beat Rutgers in two out of three games, and Rutgers is currently ranked first in the Big Ten.

I know we don't talk about baseball as much on this podcast, but it is a feel-good story that I saw. And I think that after two days of talking about the lawsuit, we could all really use some good news to kind of cap off what we've been talking about. So I know I've said it a bunch of times, but I'll say it again. If you have any questions regarding the lawsuit, hit me up on Twitter or on Instagram, and I will give you the best answer that I possibly can be with the information that I have. If you would like to hear more about this lawsuit, not from me, you can go check out Chad's article as well on Hawk Central. There's no sort of sponsorship deal or anything like that with them, but it is an amazing article and a good read. So you are more than welcome to

go check that out. That is what I'm reporting on. Uh, so thank you for tuning into today's episode. I'm glad that we got, or that I got the chance to sit down and kind of talk about this, uh, once again, because there's not really a whole lot of people out there that are willing to talk about this once again, because there's not really a whole lot of people out there that are willing to talk about this, but I want to give you guys the information that you really want to hear. So thank you for tuning in. Go check out Locked on the Hawkeyes on Twitter at Locked on Iowa and on Instagram as well. Go check out my personal pages on Twitter and on Instagram as well at ryehill, W-R-I-H-I-L. Once again, thank you for tuning in today's episode, and we will get into the rest of it tomorrow. I will talk to you all later.