Chris Doyle Defends Racist Remarks: “It Gets Our Black Players Pumped And Ready For Game Day.”

Claiming that his questionable behavior toward black athletes in the Iowa football program was only meant to “excite them into action on and off the field,” strength and conditioning coach Chris Doyle defended himself against allegations of racist remarks.

“Listen, Hawkeye football has done so much to develop the bodies and minds of young men. The discipline, the work ethic, the ambition—they take these things with them when they go out into society, and absolutely none of it would be possible without a little race-baiting in the locker room every now and then. As a coach, it’s my job to light a fire under these players, and shouting things like ‘I’ll send your black ass back to the ghetto if you can’t get five reps in on this bench press’ and ‘your Aunt Jemima could run faster than that’ really stimulates our players of color to perform at a higher level.”

Doyle stated teaching black athletes to embolden themselves requires an ability to “tease them about who they are,” and that his most effective locker room pump-up speeches included tirades in which he rambled about how the opposing team was “trying to take their watermelons.”

“I’d usually say something like, ‘Let’s go! Get angry for me, I mean get ANGRY! Pretend like these pussy Minnesota Gophers have been breaking into your house and stealing your food. The chicken, the waffles—whatever else you folks keep in your pantry! Alright on three—’ Our black players will go on and think about those types of speeches for years to come whenever they’re facing a challenge out in the world.”

Doyle went on to describe an incident in which a black cornerback arrived late to a training exercise because he had been up all night catching up on classwork. In order to make sure that it “never happened again,” Doyle jumped on top of a table, quickly put on blackface, and started doing a Vaudeville dance routine while singing an antiquated show-tune about Southern life titled “All Them Jimmies.”

“This is Iowa football. This is how we do business. We push, we empower, we sometimes use racial slurs to get our guys all riled-up and ready to make plays. So many kids come into the Iowa football program wary and unsure of themselves. After being subjected to years of rigorous training and even more rigorous stereotyping, every single one of them leaves a man, motivated to take on the world.”