Photo Gallery.  Dunbar 33 Coolidge 21.  Nov. 24th.  © 2011 Matt Dunn

The adults who run athletics for DC's high schools do the poorest job of running a league that I've ever seen. Nobody comes close.

Forfeits come in bunches in the city's public schools league, DCIAA, and it often sounds like the grownups in charge go out of their way to find reasons NOT to let the kids play ball.

One example: Coolidge administrators backed out of a game with Bishop McNamara a few weeks ago claiming they couldn't find security guards to work the game. They made this declaration at 11 a.m., meaning they all gave up trying to get the game in at least eight hours before kickoff.

A week earlier the same Coolidge officials said they couldn't play against Carroll because of an earthquake that took place three and a half days before the kickoff.

Nobody else in the region used the earthquake as an excuse for not showing up.

How messed up is that? I  grew up in Falls Church, about six miles from the D.C. border. I'm certain that out there any grownups who showed just once the level of incompetence and disregard for the kids that DCIAA officials show week after week, year after year, would be publicly humiliated and unemployed.

Why o why do D.C. residents let this city's kids get treated like crap?

More DCIAA buffoonery will be on display tonight, when Dunbar plays DeMatha. League administrators have set up a forfeit-friendly situation by reinstating a rule that allows fifth-year seniors to play sports in DCIAA. That rule was carelessly inserted by Michelle Rhee early in her tenure as DCPS chancellor.

I know of no other public school league in the country that allows fifth-year seniors, so-called "redshirts," to play high school ball.

Every athletic league in this area, including the WCAC, DeMatha's league, prohibits its member schools from scheduling games with teams that allow fifth-year players. Rhee said she would remove the rule after finding out it made DCIAA schools persona non-grata with outside confederations. She never followed through.

One DeMatha official I spoke with said WCAC leaders were unaware that DCIAA allowed redshirts until it was too late to do anything about the Dunbar game.

"We thought we were playing a team that was adhering to a four-year policy," a DeMatha official tells me. "We thought the rule allowing five-year guys was gone. But I think [WCAC officials] understand the people at DCIAA are having a hard enough time walking and chewing gum these days, or just chewing gum. So, yes, even though when we agreed to play we thought it was a team that played only four-year guys, we did agree to play, and we know the teams want to play, so we're not going to not play. We'll play the game."

Unless Dunbar can' t get security guards, that is.

DCIAA City Title Game, Turkey Bowl, Nov. 25th. © 2010 Matt Dunn

H.D. Woodson Defeats Dunbar, 44-12, Nov. 25. at Eastern H.S. NE.

The site says it got the info about Dancel from "his father." That would be Bernie Dancel, the assistant coach and mega-benefactor of the Good Counsel football program. Zach has had a stellar career playing at Dancel Field, which opened last season at the Olney school and was built with donations from Bernie.

The Dancel family foundation, which has built YMCAs and contributed to hospital wards in Howard County, gives money away like it grows on trees, and much of the funds have been earmarked for Good Counsel football. The Dancels have also subsidized the tuition of several Good Counsel players, and paid for perks such as a team trip to San Diego.

According to Scouts.com, the New Mexico offer is the first Zach has received from an FBS (formerly known in NCAA parlance as "Division 1") program. Previously, he'd been wooed by Towson and Stony Brook.

New Mexico's program is led for now by Mike Locksley, who is in his second year as head coach at the school after making a name as one of the greatest recruiters in college football as an assistant at Maryland, Florida and Illinois. Locksley is a D.C. native, and he created a pipeline of gridiron talent from this area to whatever school employed him. Dunbar alums and future NFL'ers Vernon and Vontae Davis and Arrelious Benn went where he was.

Locksley's run out west has been disastrous. He was accused of sexual  discrimination by a university employee shortly after he was hired, then was accused of assaulting an assistant coach at a football meeting.

He's posted a 1-19 record thus far. So even if Dancel accepts the UNM offer, there's little chance Locksley will be around long to mentor him.

But, as of the Halloween season, there is job opening for Zach with the Lobos: New Mexico QB Brad Gruner just had season ending surgery after stabbing himself with a knife while carving a pumpkin. 

During the Redskins/Colts matchup, we got to see Indy ball carrier Joseph Addai have the life sucked out of him in slo-motion early in the fourth quarter. Skins players held him up and LB London Fletcher delivered a professional kill shot. Addai's head snapped like a crash dummy. His senses and the ball left him before his knee hit the turf. Oswald taking a bullet in front of the cameras made for only slightly more savage television. Addai was helped off the field. He was also removed from a preseason game in August after getting concussed. And he had already reported neck injuries leading up to the Redskins game.

Chris Cooley, the Skins top receiver last night while he was in the lineup, was also sidelined moments earlier with a concussion. The Post recently reported that Cooley admitted to at least three concussions as a college player.

The Skins' Rocky McIntosh sat out last night's game with a similar headwound. Clinton Portis is officially out because of a groin injury, but he's taken a gaggle of devastating head shots this season, and was wobbled for all to see on the field a couple weeks ago.

The headwounds weren't just in Washington this weekend. In Philadelphia, where Vick now plays, the Eagles' DeSean Jackson and the Falcons' Dunta Robinson both suffered brain injuries on the same play. And Steelers linebacker James Harrison inflicted game-ending cranial damage on two Browns yesterday, Dunbar's own Josh Cribbs and Mohammed Massaquoi.

(Seeing all these hits again and again convinced me the highest paid man on the Redskins, Albert Haynesworth, who was spotted in a booth up above the field during the game taking photos of himself and his lady friend, is also the smartest.)

And the owners want to add two more weeks of this? Perhaps if the NFL extends the season, the league will also institute a standing eight count. Or have the players wear spiked collars!

Oh, well. I'd keep watching, with envy.

Locksley Recruits Vontae and Vernon Davis

For years it was agreed that nobody was a better college recruiter than D.C.'s own Mike Locksley. He was responsible for developing a pipeline of gridiron talent from the District to whatever school hired him as an assistant. Two examples: When Locksley was at Maryland, he landed Dunbar's Vernon Davis, now of the San Francisco 49ers. Davis recently signed a contract that made him the highest paid tight end in NFL history. And when Locksley moved over to the University of Illinois, he brought in Dunbar's Vontae Davis, Vernon's little brother and a future Miami Dolphins' first-round pick.

But after years atop the recruiting game as an assistant, Locksley was given his first head coaching job by the University of New Mexico before last season. And he's been a disaster. He had sexual discrimination suits and assault charges filed against him within his first few months at the school. A prize recruit from Coolidge was found to be ineligible, but not until after heading out to New Mexico to join the team.

And now he's in the middle of another brouhaha over whether he bullied a sports reporter for the Daily Lobo, the student newspaper, in a local bar after the kid wrote that the program was in "shambles."  (How many NCAA horror stories begin with "Coach walks into a bar..."?)

The school insists that no low blows were delivered by the Lobos coach during the encounter, but Locksley and New Mexico administrators made the situation much worse by obtaining the security video of the incident and then hiding it.

Still, as we learned from Bobby Knight, any and all misconduct of this sort would be fine, if only the Lobos could win now and then. But the Lobos are losing ugly. Last weekend's 56-14 trouncing by Utah put Locksley's squad at 0-3. The Lobos have been outscored 180-31. That puts Locksley's career record as a head coach at 1-14.

"Shambles" seems kind.

“We have no intention of trying to control our fans’ varied ways of expressing their views on the Redskins organization and the team’s performance,” former newspaperboy turned Redskins COO  David "Yeah, That's the Ticket!" Donovan said in the very brief ban-lifting statement.

“We’ve disappointed our fans so far this season, and I’m as disappointed as they are,” added Dan Snyder. “I understand that some fans want to express their feelings with signs and they should do so, as long as they stay within the boundaries of good taste and don’t block the view of other fans.”

This gives the "He's learning as an owner" crowd something to throw out as they perpetuate that myth.

The "He's a D-bag!" set, meanwhile, gets plenty to work with here, too.

The timing of Snyder's lifting of the sign ban was grotesque, since it was announced too late for anybody going to the Denver game to even get word. Much worse: The announcement also surely has something to do with the fact that Snyder's sponsoring a fan sign contest this Friday with his sportstalker, WTEM, at Dave & Busters at White Flint Mall as part of a Redskins pep rally.

Snyder's station sponsored the same sign contest at the same venue before last year's home game against Dallas.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Sign policies show Dan Snyder's a hypocrite? Dan Snyder ran the same sign promotion at Dave & Busters last year? Dan Snyder likes signs? You can call Albert Haynesworth lazy, but not cowardly? Tank McNamara's neither fair nor funny? Dunbar's season ends atypically? Spingarn's season ends typically? Will somebody tell Mike Miller to stop dressing funny until his damn team wins?)

From a preview of the 2008 sign sweepstakes: "A pair of tickets to the game will be awarded to the winner of the best 'Beat Dallas' sign." The same prizes are used to draw fans to Snyder's event this year.

Bottom line: Dan Snyder used to encourage fans to make those dangerous, eye-poking thingamajigs. Like the Geico sign giveaway promotion Snyder put on during the Monday Night Massacre revealed, if signs put money in Snyder's pocket, he likes 'em.

What a champ.

***

Who's not a coward? Albert Haynesworth.

Outta shape? Sure seems like it. Malingerer? Sure seems like it.

But not a coward. Haynesworth went down in a big heap in the 4th quarter and stayed there.  It's a routine he goes through pretty much every game. The replays didn't show where his injury could have occurred, but he acted like he was in a lot of pain. But, as the cameras showed him being helped off the field yet again, you could see that he was wearing no protective pads in his pants.

"Albert doesn't even appear to be wearing knee pads," Dan Dierdorf, the CBS commentator, commentated.

The pads weigh nothing. Not wearing them seems almost masochistic, or maybe it's intended to send a message of invincibility to opponents. A lot of players these days are sending the same message. But why take up this no-gain, more-pain habit? Especially if you just got paid 42 million large, like Big Al?

***

By gametime yesterday, the Redskins had earned "object of pity" status from some quarters of the Washington Post. The paper's comic books blog, Comic Riffs, had a poll asking readers if Tank McNamara had "crossed the line" of fairness to Dan Snyder in its Friday panels.

The strip in question featured a mythical contract negotiation between Steve Largent, representing Jim Zorn, and Snyder's management team. The debated line-crossing segment had Largent saying all time spent on the Redskins is "garbage time." Forget fairness. I'm more concerned that the strip didn't cross the line from unfunny to funny, yet clearly did cross into "what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about?" territory.

In any case, the recent Tank material is nowhere near as brutal to the Skins owner as when the strip named Snyder its "Sports Jerk of the Year" in 2001.

***

Big news from Saturday's DCIAA semifinals doubleheader, held at Cardozo's beautiful stadium: Dunbar WON'T be in the Turkey Bowl. The dynastic Crimson Tide got walloped by Woodson, knocking Craig Jefferies' squad out of the Thanksgiving Day championship for the first time in a dozen years.

At the "Unsurprising" end of the spectrum: Spingarn, which provides fodder for my Washington City Paper Education Issue column every year, ended the season as the worst team in the city.

In other words, Spingarn's football program enjoyed a typical year: Still another new coach was hired, not enough kids to field a team show up when practice starts in the summer, the Green Wave goes on to lose every game, mostly by blowouts, etc.

Spingarn cemented itself as the bottom of the bottom with last week's 55-0 loss to Woodson. That left Spingarn at 0-8, having been outscored by opponents 378-24.

Wait 'til next year.

***

With Saturday's latest fourth-quarter disappearance against previously nosediving Detroit, the Wizards stuck to the script of their version of "Sleepless in Seattle" — "Winless in November." The line between fatalist and realist was obliterated years ago among Bullets/Wizards fans. This franchise still wears lousiness just like destiny. Given the past and present, Mike Miller's game-day costume — from his hair on down, it's an outfit loaded with look-at-me accessorizing –  exudes nothing but silliness. My inner geezer is sure his get-up should go.

***

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David Alprin had his anti-Dan Snyder artwork, or whatever you want to call the above paper plate thingee, confiscated at the gates of FedExField two weeks ago.

Alprin's a longtime Skins season ticketholder and was one of many fans who wanted to make a statement about the state of the franchise.

He'd stayed up late the night before the Tampa Bay game crafting dozens and dozens of his statement-makers. But then Snyder's jack-booted thugs, in the form of the yellow-jacketed FedExField security staff, threw Alprin's civil-disobedient plates in the garbage before letting him in the stadium.

But while Snyder killed the message, he didn't kill the messenger. And Alprin's going back for more of the same this weekend.

"I'm thinking about going stealth and bringing in pens, markers, etc.,  and making signs in the stadium either on paper we bring or the back of the drink caddies," he says.

He won't be alone.

More on the Prague Spring of Redskins fans to come.

***

(AFTER THE JUMP: Another installment of BogusHogetteGate? Really? Michelle Rhee thinks she's god? Really? Coat-tailing on Mike DeBonis' genius? Really? Melanie Oudin's coming to town with her mom, dad AND coach? Really? Snyder comes out on top in something? No way! Way?)

In case you missed any of the several dozen installments of BogusHogetteGate™ that have appeared in Cheap Seats Daily lately, here's a reprise, just to throw a bone to the inferiority complex ravaged print version.

The keeper for me is that along with being an unsanctioned Hogette who goes by Stephette Hogette, Brooklynite Steve Rasnikov is also a rapper who relies on his, um, flow to land the ladies at Redskins tailgates. The guy's a hoot, whether he knows it or not.

All the clowns in this circus will be at FedExField on Sunday.

Here's hoping it gets uglier!

***

Back to real news: In case you missed it: Amazin' Mike DeBonis' latest and greatest find proves that Michelle Rhee not only runs the city, she runs the media, too.

We all already suspected she ran everything, right? The megalomania in the email DeBonis uncovered from the schools Chancellor — yeah, even Rhee's title is obnoxious — meshes with her behavior throughout my limited and 100-percent-frustrating dealings with DC Public Schools.

Several weeks ago I was trying to deal with Rhee's office about her handling of last year's Dunbar/Fort Hill racial incident.

It had been about a year since Dunbar coach Craig Jefferies pulled his team off the field immediately after Dunbar was hit with three consecutive unsportsmanlike conduct penalties, which, based on visual evidence, all seem justified.

Afterwards, Jefferies said he took the drastic action not because of the ref's calls, but because players from host Fort Hill were using racial taunts, including the "N-word," on his team.

Suddenly, Dunbar/Fort Hill became a national story.

But while officials from Fort Hill and Allegany County, Md., cooperated in investigations from local, state and even federal agencies, Rhee's office impeded all investigations into Jefferies charges. Rhee ignored a request from the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association, the group which governs high school sports in the state, to assist in its investigation of Jefferies’ allegations. MPSSAA had no choice but to award the game to Fort Hill as a forfeit.

Rhee also ignored a request from the U.S. Department of Justice for a written report on Dunbar's side of the story.

Rhee's refusal to cooperate with anybody in any way crushed the investigation: Because only one side, the Fort Hill side, was telling its story, the Department of Justice never released a written report that it told all parties it would be releasing.

With no report, everybody looks bad: The Fort Hill kids are left officially unexonerated, and Jefferies and the Dunbar coaches were left hanging with nobody and nothing to back up their side.

Rhee refused all recent requests from Washington City Paper to discuss any aspect of the Dunbar/Fort Hill situation, including her complete lack of cooperation with the federal government in what was, again, a national story.

She does talk to the press occasionally, of course. A cover story about Rhee from some journal called "Education Next" was linked on City Desk after DeBonis' gem. The story had a quote from Rhee as she was asked "to name her most significant achievement in her two years in Washington."

“We have begun—begun—begun—to establish a culture of accountability,” Rhee said.

The kids from Dunbar and Fort Hill know otherwise, Chancellor.

***

A little run in a major, and she's a star: Melanie Oudin, the macho/cute Georgian teen who upset three seeds in the latest U.S. Open, has just been announced as a headliner at this year's BCF Tennis Challenge, a long-running charity event founded more than 20 years ago by local girl made good Pam Shriver. The tourney is Dec. 9 at the First Mariner Arena in Baltimore.

Wonder if Melanie will bring her mom? Dad? Coach?

I feel dirty. But, heck, she's a star now. This is what we write about stars.

Tickets are now on sale.

***

Via DCRTV: A new round of numbers in the feud between WTEM and WJFK comes out, and for the first time Dan Snyder's sportstalker is on top: The latest Portable People Meter ratings, which counts the entire audience over 12 years old, have WTEM in 18th place in the market, and rival WJFK in 19th. WJFK would say, "Hey, we only count 25-54 year old males and we're doing fabulously with those guys!" To which I'd counter: "Absolutely! But can you let Dan Snyder win just one teensy little thing while the papers are saying everything else the guy's touched has gone to hell?"

DCPS, the agency she lords over, has impeded every attempt to find out what really happened on that Allegany County football field last Sept. 19, 2008.

At least, that's what school officials in Allegany County and Maryland athletic overseers say about Rhee's handling of the matter.

Rhee won't say anything. So why not believe everybody else?

(AFTER THE JUMP: Why didn't Michelle Rhee cooperate in the Dunbar/Fort Hill investigations? Why won't Michelle Rhee explain why she didn't cooperate in the Dunbar/Fort Hill investigations? How did we reach a point where Michelle Rhee feels she doesn't have to explain why she didn't cooperate in the Dunbar/Fort Hill investigations? Redskins fans are racist? Dinosaurs and Indiana and preseason hockey trump postseason Mystics? )

Though everything that took place will never be agreed upon, this much is inarguable: Jefferies ordered his Dunbar players off the field in the third quarter of a game at Fort Hill.

Another apparent certainty: Ever since Jefferies said he pulled the team because his players were being racially taunted by Fort Hill's players and turned a football game into a national debate about race and sports, Rhee has behaved as if DCPS is her own private trust, not a government agency with some obligation to transparency.

"We know what we know, but we sort of only know from one point of view,"says Ned Sparks, head of the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association, the group which governs high school sports in the state and investigated Jefferies' allegations. "I never did hear from the DC folks. We heard from Fort Hill, watched all the video, talked to referees, and police. We have not found anybody to [back up the charges that Fort Hill players used racial slurs]. But we turned the Dunbar portion over to [DCPS] people to handle. We tried to facilitate some meetings. But we never did hear back from them."

Going on what it found, MPSSAA awarded Fort Hill a forfeit victory. No sanction of any kind was issued against any Fort Hill player or coach.

Fort Hill and Allegany schools administrators also told me attempts to reach out to DCPS after the Dunbar/Fort Hill game were ignored.

The U.S Department of Justice attempted to mediate the situation, and did organize a meeting that included representatives from DCPS and Allegany County schools to talk about Dunbar/Fort Hill.

After that gathering, officials from Allegany County filed a written report that the DOJ mediator requested.

Rhee, however, did not file any report with the federal government.

And with only one side of the story, the Department of Justice did not issue any report of its findings. The mediation effort quietly died.

Because of the Dunbar/Fort Hill incident, Sparks says, MPSSAA added passages about racially charged language to the handbook it has just distributed to every team captain in the state.

But Sparks remains frustrated by DCPS's repeated failure to participate in the investigations. He says DCPS's failure to cooperate with Maryland is one thing; Rhee's failure to work with the federal mediators is a whole different ballgame.

"If they had just given their report (to the DOJ), that would have been fine with us," he says. "But..."

So, what is DCPS's official version of what took place at Fort Hill? Who knows?

"The [DOJ] proceeding was confidential, therefore we cannot disclose our presentation," said Rhee's spokesperson, Jennifer Calloway, via email after repeated requests for information about the Dunbar/Fort Hill matter.

"Confidential"? Who says? Allegany officials have talked about it and told their version: They found nothing to back up the charges that racial slurs were used.

So why hasn't DCPS said anything, either to back up Jefferies or confess that they found nothing to support his charges? Who can't handle the truth?

Calloway confirmed that no written report was issued.

Why?

"At this point we do not have any further comment," was the only response from Rhee's office. Subsequent emails went unanswered.

The bottom line: Rhee's stonewalling has left everybody looking bad.

Rhee obviously wishes the whole Dunbar/Fort Hill mess would just go away. Before it does, she should explain her behavior. She is a civil servant, right?

***

Speaking of hate speech: If you want to learn to hate Redskins fans but don't have time to spend halftime in the concourse of FedExField on Sunday, just mosey over to Dan Snyder's message board, extremeskins.com, and read what the hardcores are saying about the petition a group of American Indians filed recently asking the Supreme Court to review a lower court's decision to save the team's trademark protections.

A sampling:

TK, the bulliest of Snyder's moderators still hanging around after all the originals jumped ship, calls the plaintiffs "[s]even people that have nothing better to do then continue to make theirselves look silly for 17 years and counting." And TK's the brains of the outfit.

The poster LAXPCK weighs in with: "isnt there some firewater or beads we can give these people to make them be quiet...How about if we give them a casino?"

And the big winner among the Skins class of clowns is the poster known as ThePreciating, who, in response to a commenter who says he has "many relatives who are Native American who despise the name," writes:

Speaking of your relatives, I'm so sick of these redskins invading our neighborhoods with their high crime rates and gambling and drugs. I swear, pretty soon they'll be teaching injun talk to our kids in school.

Blasting their tribal chants out their car windows, smoking their peace pipes all over the place, scalping innocent children. It's just unbelievable.

Sorry – I guess some of that Washington Redskins racism is rubbing off on me.

Wowee.

***

Last weekend's performance of the St. Louis Rams offense makes the Skins offense look like the Saints offense.

Or something like that.

But as bad as his team is, this weekend's game at FedExField will be new Rams coach Steve Spagnuolo's "grudge" game. You know he's got it in for Dan Snyder. Shortly after crushing Gregg Williams in the last offseason with dirty leaks about him disrespecting Joe Gibbs, Snyder et al sold some folks in the DC media on a tale that the reason Spags didn't get the Skins head coaching job was because the job interviewer (Snyder) and the interviewee (Spags) agreed that the interviewee (Spags) wasn't ready to be a coach.

Nobody outside this market ever bought that story, not after all those interviews at Snyder's Maryland estate, the one with the good view of the river.

But Spagnuolo surely didn't have any trouble staying awake for an extra couple hours of film watching this week in hopes of getting his first win as a head coach — or at least scoring his first points — against the owner who slimed him.

***

Finally, a poll where the Redskins DON'T finish last: The Skins are in fourth in opensecrets.org's ranking of NFL teams based on the amount of political contributions made over the last 20 years. Skins owners and officials have donated a total of Washington Redskins $323,000 over that time, a mere $8,550, or about 3 percent, to Democratic Party candidates.

The clubhouse leader by almost a full zero is the San Diego Chargers, who according to opensecret.org's data have given $2,455,200, all but 2 percent to the GOP or its candidates.

***

The Mystics opened the playoffs in a college gym because "Walking with Dinosaurs: The Arena Spectacular" got dibs on their regular home, the Verizon Center. Playing away from the treasured "Attendance Champion" banners, the Mystics lost, 88-79. The T-Rexes will be gone in time for Game 3* of the Best of Three series. But the Caps are scheduled to play the Buffalo Sabres at Verizon.

And, as everybody knows, preseason hockey trumps postseason women's basketball EVERY TIME!

***

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The biggest addition to the code will be a clause prohibiting the use of any racially charged language during sporting events sanctioned by MPSSAA.

"There was no section on racial slurs before," says Shanetta Paskel, spokesperson for Maryland Attorney General's office. The AG's office worked with MPSSAA on the new wording.

The MPSSAA board's vote on the slurs clause will be the final official action related to the fiasco that was the Dunbar/Fort Hill high school football game held last September 19.

Dunbar coach Craig Jefferies pulled his team off the field with about four minutes left in the third quarter with his team leading 14-8, but with host Fort Hill on the verge of a go-ahead score. Referees had just flagged Dunbar with three consecutive unsportsmanlike conduct penalties. The first flag was thrown when a Dunbar player, arguing with one of his assistant coaches on the sideline, kicked his helmet onto the field right in front of a referee.

The second 15-yarder was a called after a very late hit by Dunbar on the very next play, again right in front of a referee. And the third came when Jefferies walked to the middle of the field to yell at the referees as they're marching off the late-hit penalty. "Highlights" of the debacle are available on youtube, and while there's no way to tell what was or was not said on the field from watching the clips, any objective observer would conclude that all three flags against Dunbar were justified.

But after getting flagged himself, Jefferies never goes back to the sideline or says anything to Fort Hill's coaches; he simply waves his team to follow him out of the stadium. The Dunbar players taunt the crowd on their way to the exit.

In the days after the game, which was declared a forfeit victory for Fort Hill, Jefferies said he walked out because Fort Hill players were calling Dunbar players "the N-word," and he feared the situation would get violent if the game continued.

Post-racial America was still months away. So the Dunbar coach's charges caused the U.S. Department of Justice to get involved. A mediation officer organized a meeting with officials from both schools and both school districts (Fort Hill is in Allegany County, Md.). Tim Johnson, the federal mediator from the DOJ's Community Relations Service (CRS) who organized the meeting, which included coaches, principals, athletic directors and district administrators, said he would be issuing a report on his findings following the summit.

Johnson's office, however, never produced any such report.

Johnson has since retired, and his replacement at CRS says the office is no longer involved in the Dunbar/Fort Hill matter.

Carl Snowden of the Office of Civil Rights of the Maryland Attorney General's Office also announced shortly after the Dunbar/Fort Hill game that his agency would be conducting its own investigation of what took place on the field.

The Office of Civil Rights, however, never did investigate or disclose why it dropped the investigation.

A source within the office says the investigation was scrapped after state officials determined that even the worst hate speech on a football field was protected by the First Amendment.

Under orders from DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee, McKinley Tech canceled a game with Fort Hill scheduled for a few weeks after the Dunbar debacle.

The lack of any third-party report leaves the charges against Fort Hill hanging.

Before and during the mediation session, Fort Hill coaches, players and administrators denied anybody with the school used racial slurs against Dunbar, and still deny ever using racial slurs against Dunbar.

"We talked to the game officials, the police, everybody we could," says Fort Hill principal Steve Lewis. "What we said is we can't find anything, anybody who heard anything. I'm not naive enough to say something couldn't have happened that somebody didn't hear, but there were five officials. It's a bad situation. Dunbar's got a good tradition, a strong program; we've got a good tradition, a strong program. Hopefully, we can put it behind us and learn from it."

Lewis says that he submitted all his findings to the Allegany County school superintendent's office after the mediation session, and that those were forwarded to Tim Johnson at the mediation meeting, as both school districts were supposed to do. Lewis says he was told Johnson would be issuing his report shortly after the meeting, but that the reason no report from DOJ about its findings was ever issued was because DCPS and "Dunbar never did submit their report."

A call to Rhee's office for comment on the Dunbar/Fort Hill matter was not returned by deadline.

Fort Hill went on to make it to the Maryland Class 1A championship last season. They were beaten, 20-19, after a last-second touchdown by Dunbar...of Baltimore.

There are a few legacies of the Dunbar/Fort Hill game: Fort Hill's 2009 football schedule, for one, includes no DC schools.

And, again, there's the hate-speech clause proposed for the MPSSAA's code of conduct. "We expect this revision will be adopted without opposition," says Paskel.

In other words, the Maryland Attorney General's office has determined that from now on, the First Amendment won't save you from getting a 15-yard penalty.

His powers will now face their greatest test: Locksley just took the head coaching job at New Mexico. Shortly after taking the job, Locksley landed two of the top prospects in DC's prep class of 2009: Coolidge’s heralded quarterback Emmanuel Yeager and the city's top receiver, also from Coolidge, Derrell Person. (However, Yeager, who went to three different high schools here and whose recruitment was marked by questions about his transcript, recently dropped off the New Mexico squad, citing family issues back in DC.)

So I ask Vontae, who was lured to Illinois by Locksley and thrived there, the question that every rival recruiter in college football has been wondering for years: What's Locksley's secret?

"It's no secret. He doesn't have a secret," says Vontae, a No. 1 pick of the Miami Dolphins in this year's NFL draft. "He's a DC guy, and he makes DC guys feel comfortable with him. He won't tell you anything he doesn't mean." (The Chicago Sun-Times reported that Locksley's salary of $479,233 while with the Illini made him one of the highest paid workers on the state’s payroll.)

Though Locksley's workplace is now two time zones and a world away from DC, the Davises remain convinced that he'll still work his recruiting magic — even in Albuquerque.

"Oh, he's going to bring talent that New Mexico has never seen before now," laughs Vontae. "Let me tell you that!"

DC's own Vernon and Vontae Davis, the 3rd set of brothers ever to be drafted #1 in the NFL, will come home to put on a free youth football clinic this Saturday at their alma mater, Dunbar.

Along with being Exhibit A on how much gridiron talent can be found within the underappreciated DCIAA, the Davis brothers tale shows how valuable a great recruiter can be to a college program.

Both were wooed out of high school by Mike Locksley, a Ballou alum who for the last decade has controlled the flow of DC-area football talent the way the Corleone family once did olive oil.

Locksley landed Vernon, now a tight end with the San Francisco 49ers, while he was recruiting coordinator for Maryland. After a year at Florida, he moved to Illinois as offensive coordinator and brought Vontae (the top pick of the Miami Dolphins in the 2009 draft) and scads of other area phenoms (Eddie McGee, Arrelious Benn) to Champaign.

Locksley has now taken over the football program at New Mexico, his first head coaching job.

And early indications are the DC kids will keep going wherever he goes. Even to Albuquerque: Coolidge's heralded quarterback/receiver tandem of Emmanuel Yeager and Derrell Person committed to New Mexico after Locksley got the top job.

New Mexico!

The Davises camp is designed for kids 8 to 18 years old, and will run from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Admission is free.

(BTW: the other sets of sibling first rounders are (obviously) the Mannings, Eli and Peyton, and (never heard of one of 'em) the McDougles, Jerome and Stockar.)