Former star QB Colt McCoy was involved in emails with University of Texas alumni defending controversial spirit song with racist ties

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  Former Longhorns star and current Arizona Cardinals quarterback Colt McCoy was involved in the University of Texas alumni group that discussed strategies for preserving the school's controversial fight song "The Eyes of Texas," according to Kate McGee of The Texas Tribune.
McCoy's relationship with the alumni is relatively unknown. But McGee reported that McCoy, a former first-team All-American for the Longhorns, now an 11-year NFL veteran, was part of an email chain with the donors. In the email, Longhorn donors and fans addressed the controversy on June 29, when students began to speak out against the song in the aftermath of George Floyd's death.
Related: The science behind how NFL quarterbacks throw perfect spirals

Shortly after the email was sent, McCoy was reportedly on a conference call with other alumni to discuss potential solutions to the controversy.
McCoy again engaged in communication with the donors who were threatening to pull money from the school. This came after an incident on October 10 when football players refused to stand while the song played after a loss to Oklahoma, according to emails obtained by McGee.
University president Jay Hartzell received over 300 emails on the matter, most of which were from outraged alumni demanding that action be taken to preserve the school's traditions.
Jay Hartzell defines the expectations of athletes during the Eyes of Texas. pic.twitter.com/FfYHCbRInT
— Longhorn Network (@LonghornNetwork) March 9, 2021
 
"[Alumni] are pulling planned gifts, canceling donations, walking away from causes and programs that have been their passion for years, even decades, and turning away in disgust. Last night one texted me at 1:00 am, trying to find a way to revoke a 7-figure donation," President of the Longhorn Alumni Band Charitable Fund Board of Trustees Kent Kostka wrote to a group of administrators in an email obtained by The Texas Tribune. "This is not hyperbole or exaggeration. Real damage is being done every day by the ongoing silence."
Players also accused donors of threatening their employment prospects if they didn't stand for the song, and some players claimed athletic officials made it a requirement to stand during the song.
Athletic Director Chris Del Conte disputed that players were forced to stand during the song and said he had not heard of donors or alumni threatening job opportunities.
The song's controversy stems from beliefs that its lyrics are tied to quotes from former confederate generals and that it had been performed in black face, which supporters of the song have tried to dispute.
An investigative report conducted by the university confirmed that the song debuted at a minstrel show where students 'likely wore blackface' and that former university president William Prather coined a phrase in the song from a saying among Confederate leaders during the Civil War.

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Trump might have 'found' the votes he needed to win Georgia under state's new election law

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  What if Georgia election officials had somehow found those nonexistent votes that then-President Donald Trump pressured them to “find” to overturn his narrow loss in the Peach State? What if there hadn’t been a secretary of state with not only the spine but the authority to make sure the election was immune from partisan cheating?
It would have been a devastating loss for democracy, that’s what. And it would have been much easier to pull off had Georgia’s brand-new election law been in place.
Thanks to a somewhat overlooked provision in Georgia’s new restrictive voting law and similar measures being pushed in more than a half-dozen other GOP-controlled legislatures, the skids are becoming better greased for Trump-style election tampering in the future. These attempts to subvert the will of voters must be stopped.
Related: GA Rep arrested, dragged while gov signed GOP voting bill
What is behind the law
Tucked inside the new Georgia elections law is a measure that shifts a significant amount of election oversight power from the secretary of state and county election boards to the legislature. The measure removes the elected secretary of state as chair of the state election board and replaces him or her with an appointee of the Republican-run legislature.  
Such a coincidence! Just a few months after Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger says “no” to magical vote-finding, the legislature takes a chunk of power and authority from his office and shifts it to someone of their choosing — and, we can only assume, more likely to do their bidding.
The law doesn’t just change who picks the chair. Now, the majority of the board’s members will be legislative appointees, and the board gains ominous new power: the ability to remove and replace election officials administering the vote at the level where the real elections work happens — the county level.
Let’s say the state board does not like the way vote-counting is going in heavily Democratic Fulton County. Under the new law, the board can fire those in charge and plop in a new boss more to its liking.
“After the November election last year,” Gov. Brian Kemp said as he signed the bill into law, “I knew … that significant reforms to our state elections were needed.”
Given that no one has produced evidence of large-scale cheating, fraud, counting dead people’s votes, or losing living people’s votes, I think we know what Kemp sees as needing “reform”: Democrat Joe Biden's victory in previously red Georgia.
“Republicans are brazenly trying to seize local and state election authority in an unprecedented power grab,” says voting rights leader Stacey Abrams, former Democratic leader in the Georgia State House. The new law, she says, is “intended to alter election outcomes and remove state and county election officials who refuse to put party above the people … Had their grand plan been law in 2020, the numerous attempts by state legislatures to overturn the will of the voters would have succeeded.”
Abrams is one of many calling the new Georgia law unconstitutional, and three voting-rights groups have filed a lawsuit. Not to play judge, but bear in mind that the Constitution forbids states from placing undue burdens on citizens’ right to vote. It stands to reason that includes the burden imposed by politicians’ power-grabbing authority over election administration.

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