Columbia Football Suddenly Looks A Lot More Offensive

Columbia football has been in a world of hurt for a long time now, with a shameful .323 winning percentage (71-147-2) since 1991.

But what's really shameful for Columbia football has been the last 48 hours. Late Tuesday night, NBC New York reported that sophomore defensive lineman Chad Washington was charged with aggravated harassment after he allegedly assaulted and threatened another student with racial slurs.

According to the criminal complaint, the incident occurred at 1:45 a.m. on Sunday. Detective Michael Diaz of the NYPD's bias incident investigations unit says the victim "observed defendant with five other individuals in front of the above mentioned location and hears someone in the group state in substance: 'Yellow fever. Chinky eyes. Asian mother fucker.'"

The victim then said Washington followed him and grabbed his shirt collar, pushing him against the wall. Washington allegedly said, "You're an Asian pussy. Why don't you hit yourself you Asian pussy."

And then it got worse for Columbia football. WKCR, Columbia's radio station, compiled a gallery of 46 tweets ranging from homophobic to racist and everything offensive in between, dating back as far as June 2011, six months before Pete Mangurian replaced Norries Wilson as head coach of the Lions.

On Oct. 16 (three days after the Lions lost to Penn), freshman wide receiver Scooter Hollis tweeted, “That’s the last homo tweet you get today,” in response to a Twitter user who had posted, "Damn I feel so misunderstood." On Dec. 6, then-junior quarterback and former team captain Sean Brackett tweeted at another user, "shut up fagasaurus rex." And on March 7 of last year, Washington himself tweeted, "When Asian ppl fall asleep in class the teachers can't tell! Lol".

Not surprisingly, some of the players have been deleting their Twitter accounts.

More surprisingly, Washington had written an op-ed piece in March for the Columbia Spectator arguing that the school's student-athletes deserved more respect on campus. "Do not question our authenticity of our status until you take the time to immerse yourself in the athletics of Columbia."

And once we got a little more immersed, Columbia had to respond. School administrators sent a statement to students Thursday in response to the alleged hate crime and the offensive tweets. Director of Athletics Dianne Murphy and Mangurian wrote a letter to the community regarding the players' remarks, with Mangurian also posting on his blog Thursday evening.

More to follow in a Q&A with Sam Tydings of WKCR, who helped assemble the damning gallery of tweets and has been covering this story from the very beginning.