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That word does not mean what you think it does... and how we correct it.


Iceman

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I respect Jeff Monken as a football coach and a leader of young men. I imagine a lot of folks are embarrassed by what they thought was a unifying slogan that turns out to be anything BUT that.  I have followed Army football pretty closely since 2013 and never even noticed the letters on the skull flag. Nobody worth a shit wants their name tied to something so divisive. Do you feel like it was handled correctly?

Army football program dropped motto of white supremacist origin

Dan MurphyESPN Staff Writer

The Army football program removed a slogan from merchandise and a team flag earlier this year after administrators were told that the phrase originated with white supremacist gangs.

For the past several years, the Black Knights have taken the field for each game flying a pair of banners: the American flag and a black skull-and-crossbones flag with four letters inscribed on what would be the upper lip of the skull: GFBD. The acronym is shorthand for "God Forgives, Brothers Don't" and has been part of the football program's lexicon since the mid-1990s.

West Point officials and members of the athletic department said they were unaware that the phrase links to motorcycle gangs and Aryan Brotherhood sects until that connection was brought to their attention in September.

Athletic director Mike Buddie said head football coach Jeff Monken addressed the team in September after learning about the phrase's roots and told them it would immediately be removed from the program. According to Buddie, Monken was "mortified" and planned to use the instance as a "teaching moment" for his players.

"It's embarrassing, quite frankly," said Lt. Gen. Darryl Williams, the superintendent of the United States Military Academy. "... We take stuff like this very, very seriously. Once I found out about this goofiness, I asked one of our most senior colonels to investigate."

After finding and adopting this flag as a symbol of team camaraderie upon arriving at Army, Black Knights football coach Jeff Monken has since removed a slogan from it after learning that it originated with white supremacist gangs. Dustin Satloff/Getty Images

After a two-month investigation, military officials said they determined that the motto was used without knowing its origin, and therefore its use by the team was "benign" and had nothing to do "with the views or beliefs of white supremacist groups or any other disreputable organizations with which they might also be associated," according to an executive summary of the investigation's final report.

An expert on far-right hate groups from the Anti-Defamation League said the GFBD phrase -- an omerta used to discourage snitching -- likely started among outlaw biker gangs and was at some point adopted by members of the Aryan Brotherhood. Mark Pitcavage, who earned a doctoral degree in American military history before studying far-right extremism as part of his role with the Anti-Defamation League, said he was not aware of the phrase being used by any military groups in the past or having roots elsewhere.

The skull-and-crossbones imagery was first used by Army football players to symbolize "toughness, tenacity, camaraderie and accountability" in the early 1990s and appeared on T-shirts before it was put on the team flag, according to investigators. The GFBD phrase wasn't made part of that symbolism by football players until 1996, according to Buddie.

A group of players adopted the phrase after seeing it in the action movie "Stone Cold," starring former NFL linebacker Brian Bosworth.

In the film, Bosworth plays a police officer who goes undercover to join a Mississippi biker gang called "The Brotherhood." The fictitious gang prominently displays Confederate and Nazi flags in its clubhouse throughout the movie, and members wear jackets that feature a burning cross and SS lightning bolts. Bosworth's love interest in the movie has a "GFBD" tattoo, and another member of the gang says "God Forgives, Brothers Don't" during a climactic fight scene.

Buddie said West Point's investigators spoke to the former cadet who initiated the use of the phrase in the football program, and he told them he did not know of its connection to any white supremacist groups. West Point officials declined to share the name of the former cadet and said it would be redacted in publicly accessible versions of the investigation report.

Officials declined to share the name of the colonel who conducted the investigation or make him available for an interview. They also declined requests to speak to Monken and other current members of the football program.

Monken, who has been the Black Knights' coach since the 2014 season, told ESPN in August -- before he or any other members of the athletic department say they were aware of the phrase's origin -- that someone on his staff discovered the GFBD flag in an equipment room shortly after their arrival.

The flag had not been used by recent teams, but Monken decided to bring it back to try to inspire camaraderie among his players.

An upperclassman on the team told ESPN in August that the flag had come to represent the team's mentality in everything they do.

"That's become our symbol," he said. "I don't know if you can see it, but it says 'GFBD' over the teeth: God Forgives, Brothers Don't. That's just something we always say, and that's become part of us."

Neither the player nor the interviewer was aware of the motto's white supremacy origins at the time. ESPN is choosing not to use his name because West Point officials have declined to make him or any other players available for follow-up questions.

When ESPN first asked to learn more about the history of the skull and crossbones -- before discovering the "God Forgives, Brothers Don't" origin -- multiple spokespeople in the athletic department discouraged the inclusion of any mention of the GFBD phrase. One spokesman said he would "sincerely appreciate leaving that out of the story because it is an internal thing." Another athletic department official said in September that he had not heard Monken or any of the team members use the GFBD phrase before.

The phrase appeared on several official social media accounts for the team and its staff, on merchandise and on the flag the team carried to the field and displayed in its main meeting room. It was engraved on the inside of rings given to the team for winning the Armed Forces Bowl.

When asked why ESPN was discouraged from using the phrase if no one at West Point was aware of its problematic origins, an academy spokesman said the athletic department officials were concerned that any motto that uses the word "God" might be misinterpreted as the military espousing religion and might create problems for an institution that works hard to keep matters of church and state separate.

Since dropping the slogan, the academy has updated the process it uses to vet and approve publicly accessible mottos or phrases used by teams and clubs at West Point.

According to the executive summary of its investigation, the academy is considering creating a replacement motto for a "new era" of Army football.

Edited by Iceman
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important to note here, that the 1996 Army team was probably the best team ( in terms of win-losses) since the MNC teams of WW2.

 

They finished 10-1 only losing the Independence Bowl to Auburn because their kicker missed a 27 yard FG

So it makes sense that if those graduating seniors came up with the phrase from wherever (the story mentions a terrible Boz movie) that the next years class would keep the slogan.

and once the next years class kept the slogan, and the next, it became lexicon.

 

 

 

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2 hours ago, AUS-97HORN said:

important to note here, that the 1996 Army team was probably the best team ( in terms of win-losses) since the MNC teams of WW2.

 

They finished 10-1 only losing the Independence Bowl to Auburn because their kicker missed a 27 yard FG

So it makes sense that if those graduating seniors came up with the phrase from wherever (the story mentions a terrible Boz movie) that the next years class would keep the slogan.

and once the next years class kept the slogan, and the next, it became lexicon.

 

 

 

More than anything, I'm surprised in the age of google and social media that it took this long to be discovered. 

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Read this story yesterday. From what I can tell it was handled as perfectly as possible when it was discovered.

We fucked up. We will fix the process that led to this mistake. The person responsible did not realize what he was doing but that is no excuse for us as an organization to allow it to happen. It will not happen again.

A whole shitload of organizations could learn some lessons from this.

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5 hours ago, Iceman said:

A group of players adopted the phrase after seeing it in the action movie "Stone Cold," starring former NFL linebacker Brian Bosworth.

The adoption of the slogan seems benign, and this looks to have been well-handled by the administration.

BUT....the quoted text above causes me to have serious, major, terrifying doubts about the quality and reliability of our armed forces.  I mean....they're inspired by Stone Cold?  FFS....

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4 hours ago, AUS-97HORN said:

important to note here, that the 1996 Army team was probably the best team ( in terms of win-losses) since the MNC teams of WW2.

 

They finished 10-1 only losing the Independence Bowl to Auburn because their kicker missed a 27 yard FG

So it makes sense that if those graduating seniors came up with the phrase from wherever (the story mentions a terrible Boz movie) that the next years class would keep the slogan.

and once the next years class kept the slogan, and the next, it became lexicon.

 

 

 

Also important to note: GFBD probably didn't have racist connotations in 1996. 

This is like a mini-version of guilting Indians over swastika imagery, IMO.

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Who keeps on trusting you
When you've been cheating
And spending your nights on the town
And who keeps on saying that he still wants you
When you're through running around
 
And who keeps on loving you
When you've been lying
Saying things ain't what they seem
 
God does
But I don't
God will
But I won't
And that's the difference
Between God and me -- noted skinhead Nazi Lyle Lovett
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3 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

Also important to note: GFBD probably didn't have racist connotations in 1996. 

This is like a mini-version of guilting Indians over swastika imagery, IMO.

According to the article, it was started as a racist phrase. 

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3 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:
Who keeps on trusting you
When you've been cheating
And spending your nights on the town
And who keeps on saying that he still wants you
When you're through running around
 
And who keeps on loving you
When you've been lying
Saying things ain't what they seem
 
God does
But I don't
God will
But I won't
And that's the difference
Between God and me -- noted skinhead Nazi Lyle Lovett

Damn. You are now making me question whether Pontiac really was his best album, as I’ve long held as truth.  Dusting this one off this afternoon. 

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" the athletic department officials were concerned that any motto that uses the word "God" might be misinterpreted as the military espousing religion and might create problems for an institution that works hard to keep matters of church and state separate."

Forget the origin for a minute, why was this part not an issue with them from the start? Or am I misreading something? 

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16 hours ago, BBQ2Bayou said:

" the athletic department officials were concerned that any motto that uses the word "God" might be misinterpreted as the military espousing religion and might create problems for an institution that works hard to keep matters of church and state separate."

Forget the origin for a minute, why was this part not an issue with them from the start? Or am I misreading something? 

 

Because "God" is non-denominational, and no single religion has a trademark on "God".

Plus it has the added benefit of giving atheists something to be aggrieved about.

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19 hours ago, Dahobbs said:

According to the article, it was started as a racist phrase. 

Reading comprehension...

"An expert on far-right hate groups from the Anti-Defamation League said the GFBD phrase -- an omerta used to discourage snitching -- likely started among outlaw biker gangs and was at some point adopted by members of the Aryan Brotherhood."

 

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On 12/7/2019 at 12:04 PM, Dennis Taylor said:

Lots of people spend a lot of time trying to find things people should be offended by. That's been a team thing for a long time and those guys go through a ton of shit together on and especially off the field...if they want that as their motto, WGAF if it 'offends ' someone outside the program 

I agree, however...

These young men will be leaders of other soldiers, of virtually all ethnicities and backgrounds.  Why embrace something so potentially divisive when it is absolutely unnecessary?

Additionally, that flag goes out when the team takes the field in front of the whole student body. Again, this is the cradle of military leadership, and you are suggesting everyone just " roll with it, because..."

That ain't how it works there.

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