During a football camp at Ferris State, last Thursday, Michigan head football coach Jim Harbaugh made a statement that immediately raised some eyebrows and upset quite a few people.
While speaking about former Michigan head coach Bo Schembechler, who some are blaming for looking the other way when it came to Dr. Robert Anderson’s alleged sexual abuse of hundreds of patients during his time at the university, Harbaugh came to his defense.
“Bo Schembechler … there was nothing that I saw in the times when I was a kid here, my dad was on staff or when I played here … he never sat on anything,” Harbaugh said at a football camp at Ferris State on Thursday. “He never procrastinated on anything. He took care of it before the sun went down. That’s the Bo Schembechler that I know. There’s nothing that ever was swept under the rug or ignored. He addressed everything in a timely fashion. That’s the Bo Schembechler that I knew.”
One person who is not happy at all about what Harbaugh said is former Wolverines player Jon Vaughn, who says he was molested by Dr. Anderson.
Vaughn says Harbaugh’s comments were “heartless” and that having a coach who has been “average at best” at his job be an “authority” on this subject is not right.
“I thought it was completely heartless,” Vaughn told the Free Press on Friday. “He’s not a representative of the players. So, why is that he makes these comments as if he is an authority speaking for all of us because he is one of us? You say you knew Bo one way and we say we knew him another — you have more credibility in that?”
“I will never speak out defending those who enabled and let wrong be wrong,” Vaughn said. “So, to have Jim Harbaugh, who is average at best in his career as a Michigan head coach, be an authority of what has already been what close to 1,000 victims … it is clearly in a lot of minds, in a lot of us survivors, that you’re against us.”
“I was not only angered but also hurt,” Vaughn said, “because we have to relive this every day.”
Quotes via Detroit Free Press: LINK
Curious
So Mr. Harbaugh cannot have an opinion? He cannot state what he observed or didn’t observe? It is a terrible thing that any kind of abuse did/didn’t happen, but to condemn or attack a person for stating what he saw or did not see is really pathetic. And to attack that person personally about their job and their performance is beyond pathetic. To call him heartless is really bizarre, he never said it didn’t happen he just stated his opinion about Bo. So tired of the press and everyone attacking people for not conforming to what the press considers right or wrong, grow up people and think for yourself.
Uhh. Maybe this dude is kinda hurt because he is defending someone who swept his molestation under the rug.