CARLTON FLETCHER: It’s only one win, but what a win

I know a change gonna come.

— Sam Cooke

Staff Photo

I was excited to hear the outcome of one of the biggest wins in college football Saturday, but disappointed that other obligations kept me from watching this historic showdown.

And, no, I’m not talking about Alabama’s unraveling of Florida State.

Albany State University’s convincing 29-12 victory over highly regarded Valdosta State University — only the second time in the two schools’ history that ASU has claimed a victory — was significant for so many reasons. Most importantly, it offers evidence that ASU can be a force in the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference this year. Almost as crucial: It gives the Rams confidence that they can play with any team on their schedule.

But for coach Gabe Giardina and his coaching staff, the win reaches beyond the playing field to the very culture of this community.

Everyone has talked around it since Albany State President Art Dunning announced that Giardina would be the Rams’ new head coach, but there is a contingent in the community that has blasted Dunning’s choice for one reason and one reason only.

Giardina is white.

And while I’ve always thought — maybe naively — that sports is perhaps the one venue where such things as skin color, religion, national origin and all those other marginal facets of individuals’ lives really don’t matter — if you want to win, you put your best players in the position where they can do the most good, no matter what they look like — I’ve come to realize that in the era of Donald Trump, nothing’s off the table.

It is, perhaps, one of the greatest ironies of this community’s history — a history, it should be noted, that includes the emergence of the Albany Movement, an offshoot of the national civil rights movement of the ’50s and ’60s — that individuals who have long embraced Albany State with pride have now taken to openly criticizing both Dunning and the university simply because of one man’s skin color.

These so-called warriors for justice from a different era seem to have lost the meaning of the vision espoused by Martin Luther King and others who called for judgment based on content of character, not skin color.

I don’t know Gabe Giardina, only what I’ve read about him. (Oh, and sorry, coach, that some of the local talking heads have flowerized your name. I’m sure you’ve learned to live with that.) But I’ve talked with several people directly involved with the ASU program and, to a person, they say the same thing: He genuinely cares about the athletes on the team. The Rams, those same people tell me, have responded to Giardina because they get that.

Genuine human affection is not something you can fake.

Dunning knew he was going to rattle some cages when he hired Giardina, but he also knew that for Albany State’s evolution as more than a regional college to continue, such moves needed to be made. Sadly, he’s been personally attacked — and the university condemned — by alumni and, evidently, fair-weather supporters who apparently see their influence at the university diminished. These are people who would no doubt be content to see the university languishing, so long as the status quo did not change.

What people like that do, though, is they underestimate the intelligence of the students at the university. And they, inadvertently, send a message that these young people should be content to get the “same kind of education that we did.” Sorry, folks, but these kids at ASU are some of the brightest minds in this region, and they are not going to settle for anything other than the best education that’s available.

Having a diverse student body — and, yes, faculty and coaching staff — does not diminish the significance of Albany State’s legacy as a historically black college. For all those who whimper about the HBCU designation that Albany State has held onto, even after its merger with Darton State College, perhaps they have short memories, unable to recall a time when institutions like Albany State were needed because African-Americans were not afforded the opportunity to attend other colleges.

All that being said, I wouldn’t care if Giardina — or anybody who held the head coaching position at Albany State — was green. If his first game is a victory over Valdosta, a team that’s had the better of the Rams for way too long, he’s got my support.

As the ASU coach told his team and fans, the win Saturday was just one game.

But, man, it was one helluva game.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected]. Follow @ABH_Fletcher on Twitter.