Former Mountaineers in Court

And it isn't a post about PacMan or Henry.

Despite the amount of coverage it has received there is nothing exciting or significant going on in the RR trial yet (and probably not this year if they don't hurry). The Foundation was removed since they were never a party despite RR's camp trying to write them in with a third party claim, the fraudulent inducement claim will be allowed to continue for now with the burden of proof still on RR to show "the use of deceit or trick to cause someone to act to his/her disadvantage, such as signing an agreement or deeding away real property. The heart of this type of fraud is misleading the other party as to the facts upon which he/she will base his/her decision to act," RR must still overcome a merger clause which will state that only warranties within the contract were relied upon and the fact he employed counsel to oversee these things, and the last decision was that WVU attorneys can get a look at the Michigan correspondence to see just when the meetings took place.

Here are the only fireworks from yesterday:

"It's like back before the Civil War when slaves had the right to buy their freedom," said Marv Robon, one of Rodriguez's lawyers. "A penalty of $4 million is almost like a slave from Africa trying to buy his freedom in America. I think it's an outrageous amount. It's just not fair and it's not related to any damages the university is suffering."

Not bad coming from the camp that has played the race card (with Magee) already. Of course RR signed a similar contract with a similar provision at Michigan so it just proves that the self-hatred that slavery produces is so ingrained that one never truly can love themselves. I only hope that RR can overcome this institutionalized degradation of being held against his will from his time of capture (remember RR running free in the fields of Africa before his confinement), with his son separated at birth and sold to Washington State University, his forced work, and lack of compensation (if you look past the millions of dollars which doesn't count) and can someday live in a world where he isn't property but able to move from school to school while interviewing on the school owned airplane during the season (twice), make horrible entrance videos featuring Metallica, throwing the bubble screen 75% of the time, and most important being able to blame execution of his players following every poor performance without taking any blame whatsoever. If he can do all that (and still be paid $2 million or more per year) then, and only then, will RR truly be free.