USU suspends football player for ‘inappropriate racial comments’

Utah State head coach Gary Andersen in the first half of an NCAA college football game Saturday, Oct. 26, 2019, at Air Force Academy, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

LOGAN – Utah State University Athletics Director John Hartwell and head football coach Gary Andersen acted swiftly Sunday evening after an offensive lineman used offensive language on social media over the weekend. While the university did not identify the player, screen shots of Ty Shaw’s dialogue on social media app SnapChat reveal racially charged comments he was making.

“We have been made aware of inappropriate racial comments made by a current student-athlete on our football team,” their joint statement read. “This will not be tolerated and we have suspended the individual immediately, and pending an investigation will take appropriate action.”

Shaw’s comments came in a back-and-forth exchange with user “dylanbennet89” who posted disparaging remarks about the 4th of July holiday due to the fact that black people were still slaves in 1776.

“Honestly I don’t really care to educate myself on s*** that doesn’t matter,” Shaw wrote. “Y’all have months dedicated to ur (sic) oppressed a**es and still so greedy to have more purely cause history didn’t treat ur (sic) ancestors right.”

Later, Shaw added, “Y’all don’t want racism to go away! It gives you power and reason to b****.”

Shaw is Junior 6’4″, 285 lb offensive lineman from South Jordan who started in nine games this last season at USU.

According to The Atheltic’s Tony Jones, Gary Andersen planned to have a meeting with the team’s leadership committee to discuss Shaw’s comments.

Free News Delivery by Email

Would you like to have the day's news stories delivered right to your inbox every evening? Enter your email below to start!

2 Comments

  • Robert Hammond July 8, 2020 at 2:01 pm Reply

    Fire, Aim, Ready !! Thanks USU

  • derek marlowe July 9, 2020 at 3:49 pm Reply

    What ever happened to freedom of speech? His ideas may not be yours but he should not have a career in sports destroyed over political correctness go crazy…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

For security, use of Google's reCAPTCHA service is required which is subject to the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

I agree to these terms.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.