A devilfish is a creature that buries itself in the mud and sand on the floors of some seas. When a fish swims nearby that the devilfish doesn’t like, the devilfish exposes its venomous spine and poisons everything around it.
Mike Fish is an investigative reporter for ESPN.com. After listening to white prep schools talk about how they were losing recruits and football games to a small black football prep school, a plot was concocted that would attempt to poison the tiny black school like a devilfish would poison a minnow.
Anyone can take a lie, a rumor or an innuendo and run with it even though one lie often leads to another. For example, if a high school student who is not academically qualified and a poor performing football player says a coach told him if he paid a certain amount of money the student would get a scholarship to Louisiana State University or the University of Alabama, that scenario would be ludicrous.
Why? Because you have to be able to read to attend a Division One school to play football and anyone who can read can read contracts and agreements offered by any school from prep schools to Ivy League colleges regardless of what a coach does or does not say or promise.
The NCAA requires all student-athletes to have a certain number of credits in core high school classes and certain SAT test scores, or both, to be eligible to play D-1 football.
You can get test-taking skills help at a prep school and you can get only one credit so if a student doesn’t study to pass an aptitude test or improve his high school credit numbers, he will never get to attend a D-1 school.
Fish chose to conduct a negative investigation of the North Carolina Tech Preparatory Christian Academy, the nation’s prep school football program that wins the most games.
A witchhunt is not an investigative report, an unwarranted attack is not an investigative report and an arbitrary and malicious listing of misrepresentations is not an investigative report.
A true investigative reporter searches out the facts and lets chips fall where they may. A world-class journalist would never start out with a wrongful agenda and seek untrustworthy people or dubious facts to substantiate it.
When I looked at NC Tech, this is what I found: I found a school that would take student-athletes that nobody wanted and gave those students educational and athletic opportunities they otherwise could not have gotten.
Not every student at NC Tech goes on to Notre Dame, Duke or the University of Miami. However, some NC Tech prep students did go on to study and play sports at schools like Nebraska, Auburn, Kentucky, Arkansas, South Florida and other D-1 schools. Others went to D-1A, D-2 schools and historically black colleges and universities like Johnson C. Smith University and Shaw University. Many students left NC Tech and continued their education and football playing at junior colleges.
Miamian Antonio Brown attended NC Tech, went on to study at Central Michigan and is now a Pro Bowl receiver for the NFL’s Pittsburg Steelers.
A devilish reporter will never report the fact that before NC Tech student-athletes get a uniform, a playbook or a text book, they are given a copy of the Bible, the book of life.
A slanted story will also never reveal the fact that NC Tech dominates the prep schools, D-2, D-3, D-1 JV teams and junior colleges that they play on the football field often scoring 50, 70, and 90 points a game on devastated opponents.
Student-athletes and parents considering prep school attendance help in moving on to an institution of higher learning and athletic competition can feel comfortable going to North Carolina Tech Preparatory Christian Academy.
All the students have to do is be able to read the school’s recruitment letters, agreements and other documents necessary to attend the prep school and play on a team that wins more football games than any other prep school in the nation. The students must have good study habits and good personal habits and values to succeed at any school or college.
It’s easy for a devilfish to attack and try to poison a minnow but on the prep school football field NC Tech is a killer whale and, biblically speaking, no weapon formed against a true Christian school like NC Tech Preparatory Christian Academy will prosper.
If you’re interested in more information about NC Tech, contact me and I’ll put you in touch with the coach, the school and/or the Ben Salem Presbyterian Church with which the school is affiliated.
And be careful when you come in contact with a devilfish.
Lucius Gantt is a consultant based in Tallahassee and author of the book Beast Too: Dead Man Writing. He may be reached at allworldconsultants.net
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