On Saturday, the No. 6 Kansas Jayhawks lost to the unranked Colorado Buffaloes 75-72, and that offered Jack Harry and Frank Boal of KSHB’s 41 Sports Sunday chat show their topic of the night, which I assume was titled something like, “Hey you Kansas Jayhawks basketball players, GET OFF MY LAWN!” But a funny thing happened while Harry and Boal were discussing Kansas basketball, as a lot of people seem to think that Harry had a little faux pas and referred to the Jayhawks as the “Gayhawks.”
Naturally, both the station and Harry have denied that he made the slur, but he has still felt the wrath of the Jayhawks fans on the Twittersphere.
“I have never even thought about that word, even using that word. I haven’t used that word to my friends,” Harry told The Star.
“You don’t want to be called a bigot,” he added. “The hatred and the vitriol (on social media) — it’s beyond me.”
Yes, he’s aware that he’s viewed as an MU fan. But Sunday night, he says, he did a commentary on what Mizzou head coach Gary Pinkel did wrong this season.
“In this instance, there’s this deepseated vengeance between some KU people and my reporting,” Harry said. “This was an opportunity to jump on a guy. That’s the thing with Twitter. Somebody puts something up and everybody believes it, believes it’s the gospel.” (Via the Kansas City Star)
Here’s the thing – it really sounds like he said it, so it’s not like it’s the conspiracy of the year. However, in his defense, it was clearly an accident, and he didn’t say it all maliciously while pounding on the desk and lighting a KU flag on fire. But he still recorded this message to explain himself and clarify this mess.
If anything, maybe we can use this accident to help spread awareness for college bros and sports fans in general to stop using gay as an insult against other teams. I’ve lived in Florida my entire life and I still see “Gaytors” on Facebook at least once per college football season. We’re better than this, society.
