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I will posting several times a week at the new blog which you can find here.
My Edmonds News had an opportunity to interview former Edmonds resident and long-time Husky football fan Derek Johnson, author of “Bow Down to Willingham.” Before writing the book, which Johnson said presents “a shocking side” of ex-Washington Huskies football coach Tyrone Willingham, he wrote two other books about Husky football: “Husky Football in the Don James Era,” published in 2007, and “The Dawgs of War: a Remembrance,” published in 2009.
For every four or five emails I get praising Bow Down to Willingham, I receive letters from unhappy readers such as the following:
It is really unfortunate for people who bought “Bow Down to Willingham” that you used the pretense of a book on the wretched University of Washington coaching reign of Tyrone Willingham as an excuse to air your dislike of “Seattle liberals”, President Obama, and the gullible, white-guilt-ridden American public.
This part about Obama’s “radical Marxist agenda” . . . I can get that kind of political chatter by tuning to FOX — and it’s free. I certainly do not need them in an overpriced book – which no one forced me to buy, it was my choice – supposedly about Husky football. Was the whole thing an excuse to vent your political views? I’ll admit that you kept them under wraps at first, but they gradually started leaking in until finally they were the whole show
My family and I have been Husky fans since the 1930s, we have had season tickets since 1946. I personally have been going to Husky games for eight decades. I am also one of those Seattle liberals you so obviously disdain, and I never – repeat never – supported the hiring of Willingham, never liked him as a coach, and was glad to see him go. The insulting generalizations of your book are offensive. Although I bought it, I really did not expect much from your book, but I got even less. Well, you got my money once but not again. As they say, if you fool me one time, shame on you.
I responded by saying we would agree to disagree as my stance is that white guilt was the core reason why Willingham was given a fourth season. But I also thanked him for having given the book a chance and listening to the players’ stories.
Former UW linebacker Jamal Fountaine
Read the Jamal Fountaine interview here at the Seattle-PI blog.
Derek Johnson 