17 GRACE, NOT JAIL: Why Society Failed the Kalamazoo Football Player

Coach Rodo delivers a raw, passionate, and essential defense of the 15-year-old Kalamazoo Central football player involved in the viral incident that seriously injured an opponent from Lakeshore High School.

Rodo speaks directly to the national outrage, death threats, and wave of racial slurs and attacks the young man faced, arguing that the public has failed to show grace and compassion for a minor who made a "lapse in judgment" in a collision sport. He dissects the media frenzy, asserting that the story's national prominence was driven by racial bias and the desire by some adults to use the incident to attack the young man's background and community.

Drawing on news reports that confirm the player's family received death threats and that a community rally was held to support him, Rodo echoes the plea for redemption and forgiveness. He challenges the community to embrace the student and ensure a single mistake does not define his entire life, rather than allowing him to be destroyed by the condemnation of hypocritical adults.

Key Discussion Points:

A "Lapse in Judgment" vs. "Heinous Act": Rodo argues the controversial body slam was a misinterpreted football act and a "split-second decision" that spiraled out of control.

Racial Bias and The Real Story: The speaker confronts the racist comments, death threats, and parental attacks that followed, stating the frenzy was fueled by race and not just the play itself.

The Plea for Grace: Rodo condemns the adults who called for criminal punishment (jail time, expulsion) and instead calls for teaching, empathy, and forgiveness, emphasizing that the boy is already suffering.

Community and Redemption: Highlighting the efforts of community members (like Tyrone Shepherd) and the player's father, Rodo urges the Kalamazoo community to rally around the young man and protect his future.

Defining a Life: The powerful conclusion focuses on the need to show the player he is "not the 3-second mistake that he made," but a young man worthy of redemption.

Transcript

0:00

It's a pile on session. case you in my community and I see you, I could call you for what the f*ck you really are. This is a kid misinterpreting a football act, which is a violent collision sport this made the news and we all know why. And if you don't, f*ck it, I'll tell you why. Let this kid deal with what he has to deal with. There should be grace. There should be understanding of a 15-year-old child. And there should also be compassion Leave this kid to f*ck alone. I'm just calling it what it is. Welcome everybody to another edition of Coach Rodo's podcast, Winning Regardless. I would like to thank you for taking the time to listen. Today, I wanna talk about the situation that happened in youth sports, high school sports, the other day when Kalamazoo Central Kid hurt the kid from Lakeshore. My wife and I just spent the weekend out in California. We have a kid who we've known since he was like six years old, great kid. We've been around him. kids like that that I've known for that long, they call me Uncle. So he calls me Uncle Rodo So I call him my nephew. OK, so we went to go watch our nephew, Jayden Walker, who plays for USC, he's a freshman. ah Football is a very, very violent sport, especially on that level. Those guys were out there, you could hear the smacking and the pads popping and, you know, unfortunately, um a Michigan State football player got hurt that game. um He was fine. They took him to the hospital and I asked some of the Michigan State fans later on that night how he was doing and they said that he had movement in all of his extremities and so he's doing well. Everything is good to go. So I say that in understanding the sport that we signed a waiver for our children to play. The sport that... is a collision sport, a sport that requires you to go out and try to destroy your opponent at any cost within the rules of the game. Well, within the rules of the game, we have officials to make sure that we stay within those rules of the game. um The situation I'm talking about is the kid blocks a kid, knocks him down to the ground, and then he dives on, jumps up in the air and dives on him. Apparently the kid got hurt, know, a couple of, you know, spots in his back were broken, whatever it is. um But what was said about the kid who did it is what, you know, pains me. First of all, as a parent, again, when your kid is playing football, you need to understand that it's a violent sport. Sometimes plays go on outside the rules. It's not intent. It's, you know, sometimes we just make bad judgments. In my opinion, this kid is 15 years old. What he did, he made a bad judgment call because as an offensive lineman, you're taught when you hit and knock a guy down, which is what we call a pancake. Hell, they celebrate it on ESPN, which all of our kids watch. I watch it every day on Get Up during football season. when freaking Jeff Saturday is on there has a segment called Pancakes where Dominique Foxworthy and the other guests along with Jeff Saturday as he handing out pancakes, they got actual pancakes. um So it's a play that is known in football and has been taught. You're taught that when you knock them down, you get back on top of them and keep them down to keep that player from perhaps coming back. And as you saw last night with the Derrick Henry situation on the fumble, coming back and causing being into the end of the play to affect it. You know, maybe make the tackle or cause a fumble. Now, this kid may have misinterpreted the action and that's all he did. As a 15 year old kid, he made a judgment and it was a bad judgment. I am not condoning it by any way because it was a bad judgment, but he was 15 years old. It was a football play that he's probably watched on TV millions of times, but didn't understand the act himself. And maybe took it a little, not maybe, took it too far and the kid got hurt. And that is very unfortunate that a kid got hurt. But to hear the things that are being said about this kid over a lapse of judgment at 15, in which if you haven't had a mental lapse at 15, be the first one to cast a stone. At 15 years old, your brain ain't developed enough to make logical decisions every f*cking day of your life. Every decision you make is not gonna be f*cking logical at 15. And to hear the people online, I mean, this shit made national TV for f*cking what? For a football play. Now had it been, I'm sorry to say, had it been a black kid doing that to a black kid, it wouldn't have f*cking made no news whatsoever. But then it, but the fact of the matter was it wasn't. And so now it's making national news. And then I'm looking on here and I'm seeing on social media, which, you know, in my opinion, myself, and this is nobody else's opinion, this is my opinion, social media is just a platform for people who otherwise wouldn't have shit to say. To be able to speak they mind, but these are the same motherfuckers who are out in society kissing ass and all of that stuff because... They don't have the guts to say what the hell they're saying on social media. Talking about this kid's parents. Talking about he's probably fatherless. um You know, that's what they teach in the black community. uh They don't have any discipline in the black community. This kid doesn't have any discipline. What does he taught at home? His mom and dad should go to jail. uh You know, he should be in jail. He should be expelled. Are we f*cking serious? Are you f*cking kidding me? a 15 year old kid who had a lapse in judgment and you're ready to throw this kid to the wolves as if he can't be forgiven. As if he's not going to make another mistake in his life. I bet he won't make that mistake because it's hurt him tremendously. And then to hear the things that is being said about him. You don't f*cking think that's damning to his self-esteem. You don't think that's going to make him feel a certain way about himself, he can't help it. Because you got grown-ups crucifying this kid. I can understand the parents of the kid being upset, family of the kid being upset, because that's their child, that's their baby. They very well should be very upset. They should want the highest of punishment. But the f*cking rest of society, seriously? The rest of everybody else, know, condone, condemning this kid saying that he should be putting juvie. You know, I seen those kind of acts. This kid did not commit a violent act. He misinterpreted an act in a violent sport. That's all he did. He misinterpreted what he was supposed to do. Me, as a coach, my punishment to him would be, you're suspended. Perhaps the rest of the season. But guess what? Your ass get the dress and come to every game. Because now we don't know when you suspend a kid and you kick him off the team. We don't know what happens to that 15 year old kid. Then hearing all of this shit. You know people are talking to him about it. You know he's reading it himself. Reading about what people think about him. And now we got him out of our sights. Now we don't know where he is. Now we don't know what he does. Those are the things that we do to our f*cking kids when we condemn them for a mistake. Again, it's f*cking football and he misinterpreted what he was supposed to do in football. Again, we all signed a waiver for because it is a collision sport. Again, not condoning the act. Not saying that it was okay what he did, but I definitely don't think it's okay that we as a society have decided to talk to about this kid the way that we do or have or what I've seen. News reporters putting their f*cking two cents into shit. Nobody is talking about, you know, hey, you know, what can we do to maybe help this kid understand, you know, the ramifications of what he did. I haven't seen anybody talk about that. Only thing I've seen people talk about is how bad he is, how his environment has something to do with him, how his mom and dad ain't shit, how his mom and dad teaches them violence, how black kids are tough, how the Kalamazoo Central team has no respect. But I seen one comment, oh, the Kalamazoo Central, all of them black kids came to our school and they spit on our devil. Spit on your f*cking devil. What do that situation have to do? with Kalamazoo Central coming to your, Kalamazoo Central as a football team coming to your school and spitting on your devil. You just met your mascot, painting, not the actual person, the painting. As if other high schools don't do that shit. As if other high schools don't come and stomp colleges, um professional teams. Don't stomp on logos, spit on logos, pour water on logos. Hell, I did it in high school. You're our rival. What we supposed to come in and do? Kiss your motherfucking logo? No, it's a violent sport. So I have to come in with a certain mindset. And what you're asking these kids to do is to come in with a 15 year old kids, you're asking them come in with mindsets of grown ass men. And that's incapable of them, for them to do that. And I really hope that our community, his community, Kalamazoo community, wrap their f*cking arms around this kid. Let this kid know that they love him. Let this kid know that he made a mistake. Let this kid understand that despite you making a mistake, you're still loved. Because... You're defined by what you do after the mistake. It was an impulsive move. Wrong. But you tell me if you got a 15 year old child, they haven't made an impulsive move. They haven't done anything wrong. Hell, I don't even want to tell you half the shit I did at 15 that was f*cking impulsive. Now yeah, I should be in jail for some of the shit that I did at 15, but something like that would not be one of them. to say the things that they say about his parents. To suggest the things that you suggest about his environment is to say that because he's black, those are the things that we teach our kids. That is the neighborhood that he comes from. That's how all of the black kids are taught and that's how they are when now you turn it into something racial. When it was f*cking football. The last time I checked, football was colorless. The only thing that had f*cking colors was the uniform. The action is not f*cking a black kid committed a personal file. But that's what they turned it into, a black kid committed a heinous act. Not that a heinous act happened on a football field, which is what it should have been depicted as. But instead, they say it's left up to interpretation. Okay, if you leave it up to us to interpretate to our interpretation, everything that I'm reading is stating it's the fact that the kid was black that he did that. Are you f*cking kidding me? Now we're all classified as violent. Football players, which is a violent sport. I saw somebody say, he's probably out there in his community committing the same acts and you know uh fighting and Toten guns in school. I see somebody talk about now they have metal detectors in middle school in Kalamazoo and it's person that I know here in Kalamazoo who wrote that so the f*ck what? They got middle schools in the f*cking suburbs They got metal f*cking detectors in the f*cking suburbs school suburban schools They got bulletproof f*cking glass in suburban schools. And somehow we want to turn an act of impulsion from a 15 year old kid in a violent collision sport, make it about race, make it about a lack of parenting, make it about a lack of discipline. Talk about firing the coach as if the coach is responsible for his action. The coach is responsible for coaching the kid. The kid is responsible for his own action, which I know this kid is very, very sorry for what he did. Again, all he did was misinterpret the action. Because the action is being taught from middle school, from elementary to middle school to high school to college to pro. He just did it the wrong way. Hey, I know some kid coaches that would have commended him because of what he was taught and then they would have corrected him. Now again, unfortunate that this kid got hurt. I'm really, really sorry that this kid got and I really hope that he recovers fully from this. It doesn't become a traumatic situation that makes him shy away from becoming the type of person that he has the ability to become. when he gets older, but to condemn the kid who did it, to say the things that are being said about him. How the f*ck can grownups say what they say about a 15 year old child? Do you remember that you're a grownup? Do you know what you're talking about, a 15 year old child? Think about if it was your niece. Think about if it was your nephew. Think about if it was your own f*cking child that made that mistake. and the things that are being said. How would you feel? I mean, as a grown-up talking about a 15-year-old child in an act, no matter what color they are, I feel sh*tty. Because I should understand that 15 year old kids make mistakes. Shit, so do f*cking 55 year old men. Excuse me. 55 year old men, as I said, I've made many mistakes and I continue to make them. Sometimes my wife tell me I'm acting mature as a 55 year old man. You don't expect a 15 year old kid to act immature. You don't expect a 15 year old kid to make a mistake. And then to... mentally destroy this kid, not even give him any grace. I don't even see any comments of, hope the community embraces him and gets him. If there is an issue with discipline or anger, get him some help. None of that has been suggested. However, I did see a kid that I've known since he was a young kid. because a program that I used to work, his name is Tyrone Shepherd, reached out and said, I want this kid's number. I want this kid's name. I want this kid's parents name because I want to meet this kid. I want to talk to this kid. I want to embrace this kid. I want to love on this kid. The only motherfucker that I've seen say that. I've seen some other ones talk about what I'm saying. Yeah, you know, they shouldn't talk bad about him, this, that, and the third, but he's the only one I've seen say, I want to reach out to this kid. I want to love on this kid. I want to make sure that this kid understands that he made a mistake and you can rebound from mistakes, because that's what life is about. Life is about being able to rebound. This doesn't define who you are. This was just a mistake that you made as a 15-year-old kid and a mistake that you learned from. He's the only one that I've seen. out of everyone that's talked about it, that's in our community. Now, I may be wrong, many more may have, but he's the one who I always see that's posting. And I've seen a lot of people that's in the community post about it, but none of them have said that. And Tyrone, that's why I'm giving you a shout out. You might not ever see my podcast, but just know that the people who do see it know Tyrone Shepard did the right thing. And Tyrone is a young father. Tyrone has a sophomore kid. Tyrone is not, Tyrone is maybe 30 and is more mature than... uh f*cking 50, 60, 40, 45 year old men and women who are talking about this kid as if he f*cking did something criminal. He did something that was in f*cking football. It was the wrong play. Should have been flagged. Wasn't. People blaming the referees. Referees couldn't have stopped the act. The only thing the referee can do is penalize the act. So the blame is going the wrong way. There should not be any blame. There should be teaching. There should be forgiveness. There should be grace. There should be understanding of a 15-year-old child. And there should also be compassion for the young man who was hurt and also for the young man who is being hurt. And that's the problem with our society right now. We're so divisive, so divisive towards each other. We're so, if I don't agree with you, then I can't f*ck with you. And that's f*cking ridiculous. And now we're bringing it into youth f*cking sports. And again, it's ridiculous because the kid made a mistake. And that's what I'm going to continue to say in a harp on, was a f*cking mistake. If he had it to do all over again, a hundred times, I bet you he wouldn't do it a hundred f*cking times. because of what it's done to him. Imagine what this done to this kid at 15 years old playing a sport and he did what he thought was right. He didn't shoot anyone. He didn't stab anyone. He didn't rob anyone. He didn't rape anyone. He misinterpreted a football act and now he's being treated as if he's a hardened criminal. talked about as if there's no redemption for him. talked about as if there's no grace for him, there's no forgiveness for him. And is it fair? You know, I was taught as a kid, know, fair is a place you judge pigs. So my grandmother never liked to use that word. So I would ask you, is it right? As a society that's supposed to coddle our kids, that's supposed to teach our kids, do you only teach your f*cking kid? Not me, that's why they call me coach, that's why they call me uncle. Because I care about kids. I teach kids because kids make mistakes. And I forgive every kid who makes a mistake, whether it's against me or against someone else. There is not a kid that I've been around that can tell you that I've never forgiven them. for a transgression that they may have committed. Because they're a kid, it doesn't define you. You have the whole rest of your life. And this 15-year-old has the whole rest of his life. And unfortunately, something that he should forget about, by the time he's 17, 18, he's gonna have to live with for rest of his life, simply because people wanted to make it seem like this kid committed a crime. Social media, this kid committed a crime. should be in juvenile, should be in jail. National TV which what it should be local TV. It's not a f*cking national f*cking thing The killings and the shootings and all of that shit is national news This is a kid misinterpreting a football act, which is a violent collision sport that your parents have to sign a waiver for you to play, which means when you sign that waiver, the school is not liable for anything that happens to your child in the act of the game. That was in the act of the game. Right or wrong, it was in the act of the game. It was what you signed your waiver for. You didn't ask for it, neither did that kid. But it happened. The Michigan State football player didn't ask for his neck to get hurt, but it happened. Because injuries happen in sports. albeit malicious. Football's a malicious sport. Albeit outside of the rules. A face mask is outside of the rules. A block in the back is outside of the rules. A late hit is outside of the rules. What he did was outside of the rules. But would you say that a kid who grabbed a face mask for a tackle should be in jail? Would you say a block in the back from a kid? he should be in jail. He should be a juvenile because he blocked a kid in the back and hurt him. That can happen. Would you say a late hit and somebody got hurt because he hit him late? He needs to be in jail, his parents, don't have a lie, his daddy must not be in his life. What is his mom and dad teaching him at home? His parents need to go to jail, would you say that about that? No, because neither one of them, neither one of them shits will make the news. But this made the news and we all know why. And if you don't, f*ck it, I'll tell you why. Because it was a black kid who did it to a white kid. And be mad at me if you want to, but that's f*cking the way it is. Because all of the f*cking comments, and I'm one of them people who when I read the comment, who push on your shit just to see what color you are. Because I wanna know. If I, just in case you in my community and I see you, I could call you for what the f*ck you really are. And you can believe that 98 to 99 % of the mystery in, he's a deviant, his mom and dad is blah, blah, blah. His dad probably in his life, white people. made it racist. a stupid football act from a 15 year old f*cking kid. I would sit here and say the same shit had it been a white kid who did it to a black kid. Or if it was a black kid who did it to a black kid or a white kid who did it to a white kid, I'd be sitting here saying the same shit. And anybody who knows me will tell you I'm the furthest thing from a racist or prejudice or whatever. I love kids period. I don't give a f*ck what color you are. If you want to play for me, I will coach you the same way that I coach every f*cking kid. So I don't say whatever the f*ck you want to about me. The ones who know me, know me. If you don't know me, you can't f*cking offend me. I'm just calling it what it is. Leave this kid to f*ck alone. Let this kid deal with what he has to deal with. He's already mentally taken. He's already beat up. He's already abused from making a 15 year old decision. One that he's only meant to live with for a moment. His moment becomes a lifetime. And it's not right. especially for grownups to not understand, not give him grace, not forgive him. Talk bad about his family. Talk bad about his parents. We gotta do better. We have to do better. I just hope and pray that our community embraces this young man so this young man does not stray, so that this young man does not become the possibilities. I hope this young man flourishes. I hope this young man comes to realize that it was just a mistake. and mistakes happen in life. Yes, a kid got hurt. And again, I am very sorry for that kid. uh I really hope that he recovers. I really hope that he heals and is fine and have no residual effect from the incident. I really do for this young man. I also hope the same for the young man who committed the heinous act. So if you're take anything from today's podcast, what I want y'all to take is, they're 15 year old kids. They make mistakes. Their life ain't over. They're impulsive. Help them. Embrace them. Teach them. Help them be better. Show them empathy. This was a tough, tough, tough subject for me. And I'm glad to be able to get it out and to get my thoughts out. I really hope that you guys enjoyed today's podcast and really think about what I talked about. We got to do better. Thank you for listening to another edition of Coach Rodo's podcast, Winning Regardless.